No clutch pressure

[Chris Crash]

Hey guys,

As the more astute of you will remember, I've been in the process of doing an auto to manual swap on a car I got for free. Anyway, today I got everything ready finally. I turn the key to ON and I have power, everything works.

I go to start the car, push the clutch and it slams down to the floor and stays there. The car won't start, obviously.
So I'm at a loss of what to do now. I'm sure there's air in the clutch lines, but how do I bleed this if the clutch pedal goes to the floor?

Or did I just install it wrong?

[Chris Crash]

Anybody?

Somebody has to at least have an idea!

Could it just be air in the lines, since the master cylinder and lines were apart for a few days, put back together and never bled?

[Frodo65]

Originally Posted by Chris Crash

Anybody?

Somebody has to at least have an idea!

Could it just be air in the lines, since the master cylinder and lines were apart for a few days, put back together and never bled?

Well, bleeding the system IS a part of any hydraulic clutch actuator (or, for that matter, ANY hydraulic system, like brakes) repair. So, until the system has been thoroughly bled, I wouldn't consider the repair completed.

Air in the system will make the clutch not work - the air is far more easily compressible than overcoming the force of the pressure plate by the slave cylinder.

[Chris Crash]

Yeah. My dad and I just bled the clutch for literally an hour by hand. Every once in a while, if you let it sit for a few minutes the pressure will build up, but then as soon as you push the peddle and open the bleeder screw, all pressure is lost after closing the screw and releasing the peddle.

I'm about to use a homemade vacuum bleeder because I'm pretty sure there is air in alllllll of the line from the master cylinder to the slave cylinder. And that's about 6 feet of air bubbles and I'm not trying to pump all of that out by hand.

I'll post a DIY of the vacuum bleeder though!