1992 Toyota Celica All-Trac Turbo

This past weekend, the “occasionally sticking” clutch pedal has now gone to full-blown “sinks to the floor and doesn’t come up” mode.  It’s pretty bad in that I can get the clutch to disengage, but it will engage shortly after, therefore my being unable to slip the clutch.   Therefore unable to crawl or park without having the car jump, which of course is dangerous…  I had propped the pedal back up with my toes before, thinking I needed to bleed the clutch lines soon, but didn’t think it would fail this quick.  Note to self: when something is a little wrong, it’s the car telling me I should go take care of it soon, and that it’s giving me a grace period chance to address it.

So I did full on flush and bleed of the clutch system.  The fluid in the reservoir was a filthy brown, so I took it out (using a turkey baster) and flushed it with fresh new fluid, and bled the system until everything came out clear and free of bubbles.  So I thought I was done.  I start up the car, and nope, same problem.  Damn.  What I feared: The clutch slave cylinder and/or the clutch master cylinder is done for.  Just to be sure, I video taped the slave cylinder/rod with my cameraphone and pressed the pedal and flipped it up with my toes (because it goes to the floor and stays there).  And sure enough, when I first press the pedal, the rod moves the fork fine, but soon after, the rod retracts back into the cylinder (therefore engaging the clutch again).  And nothing happens when I manually lift the pedal back up.  So it can’t hold the pressure.  There’s a leak somewhere in the hydraulic system.

I ordered remanufactured slave AND master cylinders today.  I’m going to replace them all.  And finally, after all these years since I bought the parts, I’m going to replace the slave cylinder push rod with the SpeedSource extended rod and also the SpeedSource stainless steel clutch line that I’ve had sitting around.  (I was saving them up for the inevitable clutch replacement job).  It shouldn’t be *too* hard, as it looks like both cylinders are in fairly accessible locations, compared to rest of the car that requires a hand contortionist and/or removal of 100 parts to get to 1 part.  These could be my famous last words, lol…

I’ll be attacking this problem this weekend hopefully if the parts come in by then.