1992 Toyota Celica All-Trac Turbo

I received my replacement clutch master cylinder and slave cylinder from RockAuto, and so I went out to my garage to do the replacement job.  Most everything went smoothly except for the stubborn nut connecting the hard line to the clutch cylinder and the air in the system upon installation.

Surprisingly, the parts from RockAuto were the right parts.  In the past, I’ve received many wrong parts (intended for a Celica GT-S, mostly, instead of the All-Trac) so it’s always a bit of a gamble with them.  But the prices were really cheap, so it’s no big loss for me to take the chance, hehe…

The master cylinder was suprisingly easy to remove.  Disconnect at the clutch pedal, unscrew 2 screws holding the cylinder assembly to the firewall, and then with a little wiggling (without removing anything else: shocking, I know!) it came right out.

The slave cylinder requires you to remove the one bolt holding the hard line to the tranny first, then the two bolts holding the cylinder itself to the tranny.  And then I tried to unscrew the bolt holding the hard line to the cylinder and it didn’t budge and I was starting to strip the bolt…  So I sprayed my trifecta of PB Blaster, Freeze-Off, and Deep Creep on it.  It didn’t do much.  So then I remembered my trusty Vise Grip.  The Vise Grip enabled the nut to come loose finally.  So other than this 1 hour snag, things went smoothly.

I took this chance to replace the standard rod with the SpeedSource extended clutch rod (which really isn’t needed unlesss you have an aftermarket pressure plate), but I figured I’d do it now since I bought it years ago and would eventually need to replace my clutch and pressure plate anyways…  I was also going to replace the soft line with the SpeedSource braided stainless steel one, but it’s not as accessible without dropping the tranny, and I was in a time crunch (started this on a Friday night and needed my car this weekend) so I’m putting this off for later.

I proceeded to refill and flush out the clutch hydraulic system with fresh new brake fluid.  I thought I had done a pretty decent job, but apparently upon starting the car and testing it, I didn’t.  Pedal wouldn’t come up off the floor, as before…  I didn’t give my hopes up, and kept feeding fluid through the system, noticing air bubbles still coming out.  I must have flushed/bled the system for a total of over 1 hour and finally got all the air out.  I know, in retrospect, I should have used my MityVac…

But in the end, air was out.  The pedal travel, due to the extended rod, is much shorter now to disengage the clutch.  Whereas before I had to press down about 95%, the clutch now disengages at about 20% down!  I tried adjusting the pedal a little bit so that it engages a little lower, but I figured I’d try it with this setting now and adjust it later.  I actually like the high engagement point as it allows for faster shifts, however it’s a bit harder to slip the clutch.  I’ll get used to it.

I’m glad I just got replacements instead of rebuild kits, as I saved a lot of time going this route.  And again, they were super cheap on RockAuto.