Otto Mechanic

UPDATE:

After the third and final complete flush I can report (for Michael and others) that what I interpreted as "mechanical play" following the second bleed was in fact air in the clutch master/slave somewhere.

After the third bleed with amber fluid (the "new" ATE Racing Fluid) the clutch pedal was lower by about an inch and there was no play in it at all; it engaged as soon as I put a foot on it.

So it could be you still have some air in the system somewhere O'Donnell. I can only hope that's good news...

And yes, "A Return of Kings" remains the best album Rush ever produced in my humble opinion...

Otto Mechanic

Now i just have to figure out what to do about my paint after the Motive explosion last week. I was pretty careful about the car and I think I got it before it did much noticeable damage (I can maybe sorta' feel a little "roughness" on the front fenders and there may be some clearcoat damage) but I missed a spot on the lift and it took off the powder coat in a few places. I also missed my valve cover and it bubbled. I needed to take it off anyway for the cam chains/tensioners so I guess it makes a trip to the powder coater...

odonnell

Thanks again for following up - I went ahead and got a new master cylinder and a new flex hose to the slave hard-pipe. Both were cheaper than I thought. Clutch itself, reservoir, slave, and the cloth line are less than a year old - so this better be the issue Pretty confident there was no air, as this is how the pedal has always been in my memory. Driving it around the last week felt like how I always remembered it.

Otto Mechanic

Glad to be of any help possible. It's always hard to do "remote diagnosis" for this sort of thing and I never want to be overconfident when it can cost people real money. There's one person that's just outstanding on this forum, Kevin Gross, who never gives misleading advice, I seek to emulate him in that respect.

Sometimes, it isn't what you know that kills you, it's what you think you know that just ain't so (hat tip to Samuel Clemens, AKA "Mark Twain").

Hope all works out well for you,

951and944S

Didn't you say you were an aircraft mechanic...?



T

Otto Mechanic

Many, many years ago I used to crew aboard a C-141 StarLifter at NASA (the Kuiper Airborne Observatory), but they never trusted me with tools...

Otto Mechanic

Actually, they almost booted my sorry butt off the program when they caught me replacing the wheel bearings on my 914 in the hangar one fine Sunday morning. We had a most excellent shop on site, every tool you could ever want.

Needless to say, Security wasn't amused when they found me. The plane was at Travis AFB for maintenance so I thought, who will care?

951and944S

SO you're saying, we're in a C-141, skeleton crew and we're goin' down.

Pilot screams - "somebody mechanically jam the rear horizontal stabilizer....!!!"

Don't call Otto.....

T

Otto Mechanic

No, don't call Otto. Call Frank, the Flight Engineer.

No joke, that very same thing happened to me on a ferry flight to Hickam once, we lost hydraulics to the rear control surfaces. Nothing gets your attention like watching the Flight Engineer walk through the cabin carrying a case of hydraulic fluid, opening bulkheads and pouring it into various places when you're 1500 miles from land over the Pacific...

Otto Mechanic

Then there was the time we had a fire onboard....

That was exciting.

Imagine being at 48,000 feet with a fire on your plane. We all figured Frank would just dump cabin atmosphere and put it out. Say goodbye to your eardrums. We'd been working around jets so long none of us could hear anyway.