So I just replaced my slave with a new OEM unit and accumulator. Bled system with motive power bleeder until pentosin was running clean with zero bubbles.

Upon starting up car, pedal is soft at top of travel and then gets really stiff at bottom. Can't even easily push it to floor. Even with pedal pushed to floor. I am unable to engage any gears.

Any ideas?

 

I have two thoughts:

1. The bleeding process is tedious. And for me, had to be repeated several times before the pedal got "right", which is consistently soft from top to bottom. Mine feels like a Civic man.

2. I found it incredibly tricky to line up the slave's shaft into the hemispherical socket of the fork. If you're certain you did that correctly, then you probably just need to rebleed.

 

Bled it more and now it's super stiff the whole way and I can't even press it more than an inch or too.

I think the rod isn't lined up on the for correctly. ugh.

What is the best method to ensure that it lines up?

 

I'm not certain you need to redo it, but if this doesn't sound familiar, you might...

**PITA ALERT** It's all by feel unfortunately... I'll try to describe it:

Starting with the slave in your hands and out of the car, make sure the rod is seated in the socket of the slave itself, basically center it within the black boot. A quick fiddle-around will let you easily determine this.

Next just gently place the slave (without accumulator) up on top of the transmission, roughly where it belongs, taking care that the rod stays put within the boot.

From there, I reached my left arm up between the starter and body. Pull off the black rectangular inspection cover, allowing the left fingertips to touch the fork. You should be able to feel it pivot with very little force. Establish a baseline of how that feels.

Now you can kinda use the right hand to fenagle the slave. At this point you're basically bear-hugging the transmission, with left fingertips guiding the slave rod into its hole and then moving to where they barely touch the fork through the inspection port to feel the slight pivot motion while the right hand gently moves the slave body fore and aft. You will eventually feel the fork pivot in direct correlation with the slave movement.

The shape of the fork and it's socket is such that when you have it right you'll feel it. You may miss the first few times. Or you may get it perfect and then not trust yourself and end up redoing it out of paranoia. I've done both.

At this point, you can set the slave down carefully. It'll stay aligned. Grab one of the two the slave bolts, the pointy ones that install horizontally. Use the left hand to force the slave forward while you use the right hand to start that bolt. This is a pretty difficult step, so take a deep breath before you tackle it. Do the same for the second bolt.

That's the last of the tricky stuff. The rest you know.

One caveat is that I have only ever done it with 0 line pressure. All lines and accumulator disconnected. My guess is that you won't be able to do this with out depressurizing the system, which would mean another mess and another bleed.

 

Also you can PM me and we can exchange numbers if you want to talk about it rather than type about it.

 

Thx for the tips, PM sent

 

Don't forget to use thread locker (blue) on your axle bolts when reassembling

 

Fixed!!!

Stebo was dead on, the slave rod wasn't seated in the clutch fork properly. It is kind of a pain in the ***, but it's done.

 

That's why the dealer takes the engine out to do this job. Super easy when it's all on a bench in front of you. I had an Indi screw the pooch twice trying to fix the clutch with the engine still in the car.

 

Now that I've done it "twice" (only once successfully), I could do it over and over. Also much more quickly. It's annoying but doable.