Good Morning everyone.

Yesterday I helped a friend troubleshoot some clutch problems. He has a 2000 Ranger xtl, 2wd. We suspected it was the pilot bearing, so took out the transmission and low and behold we had a totally destroyed bearing.

While we were in there we swapped out the slave cylinder, and ended up having to replace the clutch as the rollers ended up trashing the friction and pressure plates.

All went well with the swapped, got the transmission back up with little issues. When we got to the end where we started to bleed the slave cylinder we had some issues.

First it seemed to work fine, we opened the bleeder, fluid came out. closed it, pumped the clutch, reopened, got some air/fluid out ect. We did this a few times and we finally got some pressure.

At this point the pressure changed inside the lines but an extreme, when I opened the bleeder fluid SHOT out compared to the light flow we got before.

From this point we could no longer get any pressure to build in the slave, or get fluid to come out of the bleeder. We pumped and pumped and got nothing.

The master cylinder reservoir started to back fill at this point, as in the level would raise. We hooked up the old slave cylinder to see if we could it to function as it was working before we did the swap. And we could get no pressure or operation of the old slave.

I suspect we blew the master cylinder at this point. Im looking for any ideas or suggestions. Our plan right now is to replace it later this afternoon.

Thanks for reading and your help.

 

Yes, Master or its check valve are bad, but they are the same part so...........yes, replace Master.

Check valve is in the master where the reservoir line connects.
When you push down on the clutch pedal the check valve closes so all pressure/fluid goes to the slave.
When you release the pedal, slave pushes fluid back into master, and check valve opens allowing any shortage of fluid to be replaced from the reservoir.

 

RonD,

Thanks for your help again. We replaced the cylinder and started to get fluid movements finally. Still ran into the issue with the clutch not getting enough pressure to engage the clutch.

We bleed the thing for 2 hours, trying different pumping methods, and fast, slow, bleed, open/close so on and so forth. So what turns out to be a common problem with these cylinders(through desperate research of what we were doing wrong) is they trap air in the master. Due to the orientation of the cylinder, pumping the clutch will never release this air bubble.

I saw videos about removing the plunger from the tube while installed. Or people applying vacuum pressure to bleed the system. Both of these worried me, I know they may be some one way values and sucking the fluid through the system just didn't sound good. Also taking apart the plunger exposes all the grease to the brake fluid, and could possible get grease into the line. So after 2-3 hours of bleeding, 3/4 of a pint of fluid through the system, I had an idea that worked perfectly.

We pulled the mud flap back on the driver side to access the master cylinder again. Without unhooking the slave or reservoir, I removed and turned the master upside down, opened the bleed line on the slave, and started pumping using the break caliphar as a mounting point. Either typing the cylinder, and or pumping it cleared the air right now. We reinstalled and pumped, and right away we had clutch engagement.

Looking back, this is something I wish I thought of 4 hours before hand, would have saved us a lot of time. Hopefully if anyone else has issues or plans to do this work, can read this and save themselves the hassle of pumping for hours trying to get an air bubble out with no success.

 

Good work.

Yes, master can trap air, but not very common unless system is drained completely, and yes removing master is best way to clear it.