Hi guys, question on clutches again. Still having trouble shifting into first / reverse.

After bleeding my clutch and taking it out of the truck to bench bleed it, I found that the master cylinder has no play at all. I am pretty sure I got almost all if not all of the air out. I also tried bleeding the slave cylinder. Usually after bleeding the truck can shift smoothly into first or reverse.

Shortly afterwards (maybe a day or so ), clutch goes right spongy again. I find myself going to fourth gear and switching back to first just to drive around normally. I'd like to correct the problem. Do I need to drop the tranny and replace the slave?

 

Yes it sounds like the beginning of a failing slave. It will progressively get worse over time.

 

Is there any good write ups on dropping down the trans? I've done in before in jeeps but not in a ranger yet.

 

I dont know off the top of my head. If you have done one in a jeep you should be alright with the ranger.

 

Did you replace the master cylinder? If not you can get the same symptoms with a bad master cylinder. Mine did this but the soft pedal was intermittent and slowly got worse to the point it would barely disengage at all. Fortunately, it was still under warranty. The first replacement was also defective and they had to install another. No problems since then.

One thing I did when the master cylinder was bad to get it to work better was to push in the clutch with the engine off and side step the clutch pedal to let it slam up. I don't know if that was a good thing to do but it worked better for a while.