Pulling my hair out Clutch wont Bleed!

[threeonthetree]

Truck was sitting overnight.when i came out to it in the morning went to press the pedal almost nothing just enough to shift. noticed that the fluid level had dropped. added fluid but could not get it to bleed. figured the master or slave were bad since it had leaked out enough fluid to suck air.
already had replaced the pressure line. and the level was high in the res.

replaced the master still could not get enough pressure to shift.

replaced the slave. seems like all fluid coming out but do not have enough pedal to shift. almost no pedal in the truck. clutch fork moves just about enough but not quite enough to shift when truck is running

bleeding tech is
up down up down with guy inside
any ideas?


other bleeding tech

[xrcr]

My only experience with a hydraulic clutch is with a Dodge which is a completely closed system, but I would think it might be similar. I had to pump and pump I'm talking several days thank god it wasn't continuous. I got it where I could drive it but had to double clutch to shift. Any chance I got I kicked it out of gear and pumped. Took me about a week. You'd think they(Dodge) could put a bleeder in on the slave. I guess they just had to "fix" the old manual setup. Good Luck

[makman1297]

I have has a simular problem, it took having a second person under the truck with a pry bar and assist the slave until it is maxed out, otherwise the slave just bounces back and forth and does not push out all of the air.

[79k30dually]

They can be pita, the bleeding procedure has you trying to force air bubbles down. If you remove the slave cylinder and depress the clutch rod slowly, several times, keep a eye on the fluid level. This procedure usually works, sometimes after I bleed it this way I'll pump the pedal about 50 times. You may have do this more than once, but not likely. Good luck, Ron

[xrcr]

What 79K30 Dually said. I forgot that i worked the crap out of the slave first.

[Tucson38]

Had a similar problem recently. Finally unbolted the slave, turned it so the bleed valve was on top, then it bled properly. Wouldn't bleed when in the normal position.

[Desert1957]

You have to bench bleed any master or clutch cylinder before mounting. If not it will just pump more air down in the system. This is why the fluid level went down overnight.

Desert

[atarijake]

Just an fyi, I read about how to bleed slave cylinders before I tried doing mine. I read that it was just terrible to get bled correctly. So I borrowed a hand pump bleeder from a buddy, I hooked up a flexible hose from the hand unit to the bleeder valve and slowly opened the valve while I pumped. It worked like a charm. Mine is an 85 sierra.

I went through a bottle of fluid before I got all the air out of it but it worked great. I also did NOT remove the slave from the truck. I read a bunch of places that the unit was supposed to be removed and tipped so the bleed valve was on top. This makes sense... as air would rise and get sucked out the bleed valve. But the way my slave was installed, it would risk breaking this metal line connecting it to the master cylinder. The replacement from o'reilly's was like 80 bucks so I just took a chance and it bled fine. IF you use the hand vac thing.

They're going for about 40 bucks on amazon, the hand pumps, gonna get me one soon.