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This afternoon, I was shifting through gears in my manual 2000 Ford Ranger (3.0) and my clutch suddenly lost all pressure/tension when trying to engage the clutch. In turn, this grounded my truck to the point I would have to turn the engine completely off, then put the truck in first gear to then re-start the truck to get it going. At first, I thought this was the slave cylinder going out but then when I got home today I realized that the master cylinder line was disconnected from the transmission/slave cylinder. After further research, I have come up with the following:
Clutch Master/Slave Assembly Replacement
What i found is that the end gold metal piece that fits into the slave cylinder, i guess, has plastic on it as well that helps with the connection of the two parts. one side of the part being the side that is put into the receptor with this special fitting. Anyways, the cylindrical plastic piece that is associated with securing the fitting is broken, leading to me to believe that I can simply buy the above and change this out to be as good as new/was.
Can anyone with experience please advise what may be the problem. In regards to the line being currently disconnected, is there any explanation why this may have "burst" when shifting through gears.
From my understanding, in order to replace this, I must take out the pin and put the end of the assembly in the receipting hole and put the pin back in. The finish by running 3 DOT fluid through the line until all of the air is out of the line.
Odd why it popped out, but that plastic part is meant to remove the fitting, not hold it in and it's not broken, there is a split in it.
It's been while, but if you look down inside the slave cylinder connection you will see many metal fingers around the inside of the connection.
Those metal fingers are meant to grab onto the end coming from the master cylinder.
The plastic part is worked in there with a screw driver to disengage the metal fingers so the line can be removed from the slave cylinder.
Check to see if the metal fingers are not broken and are flared out enough to grab the connection.
It's also possible that, someone else thought it was meant to hold the line in place and shoved it in there really tight.
This of course would have the action of releasing the metal fingers and it just finally popped off on its own.
Watch this video, it explains how it works and it shows the metal fingers, or tangs inside the slave cylinder connection.
You can jump to 4:50, but watch the whole thing.
If this connection comes off then you can NOT push clutch pedal down, it would be stuck at the top and you could not push it down at all
You said you "lost pressure" which, to me, means you can push down clutch pedal but clutch doesn't disengage, and that means the line is leaking or slave was
The connection at the slave is "self sealing", meaning when the master hose is disconnected fluid can't run down and out of the master, when connected this "self sealing" valve is pushed open, allowing fluid to flow into the slave
