I have an 86 fiero and I am having trouble bleeding the clutch hydraulic system. I have replaced both the clutch master cylinder and the clutch slave cylinder and have attempted to bleed the system. I cannot get all of the air out of the system and therefore the clutch will not fully disengage when the motor is running which prevents me from putting it in gear. When the motor is off, I have no problem putting the car in gear.

Any suggestion on how to bleed the air out of the system would be appreciated. What I have done so far is bleed from the slave cylinder to try to get the air out. It produces a steady stream of fluid until the clutch pedal reaches the bottom of its travel. At that point, I get air coming out of the system.

Thanks

There are a few tried and true methods out there that have been proven to work for some, but the only method that has worked for me to get a good bleed on the system is to use a mityvac. You can pick them up as cheap as 25 bucks on sale at harbor freight all the way up to a couple hundred bucks for a good one.

So if you try to bleed the clutch the "traditional" way it wont get the air out of it? I mean pushing the pedal twice, holding it down, cracking the bleeder then tightening it back up, and lifting off the pedal. It should work if you do it right..

That should work, but if I remember right in order for that to work, you must jack the rear of the car in the air. The clutch master sits hight than the slave, so you must get the slave higher than the master so you can get all of the air out.

just use the procedure on v8 archie's page, in the archism's. you don;t have to raise the car, remember to compress the slave.
takes 10 minutes. if you can;t get air out, you have a problem.

I just did mine this weekend. I gravity bleed my system, meaning I jacked the front of the car as high as I could and opened the bleeder on the slave. I then took a new bottle of fluid and turned it upside down in the master. This pushed all the air out of the line. Then just before I decided all the air was gone I stuck a clear piece of tubing about 2 feet long over the bleeder and let it fill with fluid most of the way. Stick the tubing straight up in the air and keep it there. Take the bottle of fluid out of the master and put the lid back on. With the bleeder open SLOWLY push the clutch arm back into the slave. Air will push up the tubing. SLOWLY let the clutch arm back and the fluid will replace the air that was in the slave. Close bleeder. You might have to push the arm in twice,I had to, to get all the air out of the slave. My clutch works like a dream.
I can't take credit for this, I owe that to the Fiero Wizard of East PA, Jim Gilbert.

------------------
Mark Hoagland
861/2GT 3.4 5-speed 355 nose and tailights REAL bright yellow
88 Formula Black with Beechwood Was an Auto car, now with a Getrag 5 speed and a 3.4.

I followed the v8archie procedure but had no luck. I looked to see if there were any leaks and found every connection to be dry and no fluid leaks on the ground. Once the master cylinder was bled, I hand-pushed the slave cylinder rod with the bleeder screw removed and it did not seem to improve the clutch pressure. I repeated this last portion several time to make sure there was no air in the slave cylinder. I still cannot put the car in gear with the motor running. When it does go into gear, it slams into gear and stalls the car. When the motor is not running it goes through all 5 gears easily.

Has anyone ever adjusted the clutch arm? It seems that when I push the clutch in, the clutch arm has maxed out it travel and can't go any further. When I replaced the slave cyclinder I used the rod from the old slave cyclinder because the new rod was too short. Could it be that with the new slave cylinder that the clutch arm does not have enough travel and therefore is not disengaging the clutch plate?

The only thing I know to do now is to get a clutch hydraulic bleed kit. Anyother ideas?

Thanks

I just park on a good incline with the left rear corner of the car the highest and do the normal brake bleed way. Always have good luck.

ok, it takes about 2 full to the top reserviours to fill an empty line, for ref. if you fill it 2x now and cycle all that thru, then you know you pretty much have the line purged. (that;s just for an empty line, will take about 6-8 to fill empty cylinders IIRC)
next, when you compress the slave this time,have your assistant hold the clutch down until the rod is in all the way and the bleeder is closed. the reason for that is with the pedal up, fluid is allowed to flow back into the line to the master, there is no check when the pedal is up. with it down, the bypass is out of the picture.
it only takes a small bit of air in the line to screw up the clutch, and once air is in the line you have to purge it out.
then when you are done, watch the arm, you should get at least 1" of travel when the clutch is depressed.
if that is good , check the arm on the tranny, if it is the type with the plastic cup set into what looks like a folded over piece of steel plate, you should carefully check that arm where it attaches to the shaft going into the tranny. they tend to crack at the serrations where it grabs the shaft and slip on the shaft. my 86 had that happen and it drove me nuts, found it as I was tearing down for a clutch job. it is VERY hard to see in the normal setup.
there have been some people saying that the plastic cup the slave rod sits in wears thru also, but I don;t recall that.
if it is cracked, replace it with the cast unit the FS sells or from some other source, welding the cracked one won;t hold (for long anyway, btdt)
if all that is sorted and working properly, you could have a fork problem, throwout or pressure plate problem. but first check the externals.

[This message has been edited by tjm4fun (edited 04-26-2007).]

I have a vac bleeder that runs on compressed air that I bought off of the Mac tool truck. Works great every time (I just used it about an hour ago) and it really wasn't very expensive. I have never been successful bleeding Fiero clutches any other way.

Cool I need that. Thanks for the post.

My short term project is to clean/exhange all fluids on the car, as I don't know how long any of them have been in there. Brake fluid has a dark ugly color, so that's first.
Then comes clutch
Then oil (just done less than 3k miles ago)
Then tranny (muncie 4spd. so I'm guessing GM Synchromesh)
Then Radiator fluid (although it's clean, I have a feeling I need to top it off anyways since I have to replace a hose)

-M

quote Originally posted by dgkeeler: I followed the v8archie procedure but had no luck. I looked to see if there were any leaks and found every connection to be dry and no fluid leaks on the ground. Once the master cylinder was bled, I hand-pushed the slave cylinder rod with the bleeder screw removed and it did not seem to improve the clutch pressure. I repeated this last portion several time to make sure there was no air in the slave cylinder. I still cannot put the car in gear with the motor running. When it does go into gear, it slams into gear and stalls the car. When the motor is not running it goes through all 5 gears easily. Has anyone ever adjusted the clutch arm? It seems that when I push the clutch in, the clutch arm has maxed out it travel and can't go any further. When I replaced the slave cyclinder I used the rod from the old slave cyclinder because the new rod was too short. Could it be that with the new slave cylinder that the clutch arm does not have enough travel and therefore is not disengaging the clutch plate? The only thing I know to do now is to get a clutch hydraulic bleed kit. Anyother ideas? Thanks

I had the same no shifting problem as you. I just bled it 2 days ago. When we tried the archie thing at first, it didn't work. But the next time we tried it we only bled the master cylinder and the clutch was back to normal. Try just bleeding the master cylinder as per Archie's instructions if you haven't. It might work.

quote Originally posted by fieroluv: There are a few tried and true methods out there that have been proven to work for some, but the only method that has worked for me to get a good bleed on the system is to use a mityvac. You can pick them up as cheap as 25 bucks on sale at harbor freight all the way up to a couple hundred bucks for a good one.

If you go this route, dont get the cheaper version like i did. Damned thing doesn't hold a vacuum well.

The one i got also had a gauge, figured it could be dual use, both bleeding brakes and checking for vacuum leaks..

I've had two from harbor freight. The first one had a broken rubber ring on the bottle. They replaced it. Now you have to apply pressure to the bottle cap to hold a vacumn. The pump itself seems fine, but they need to redesign the seal on the bottle cap.

quote Originally posted by dratts: I've had two from harbor freight. The first one had a broken rubber ring on the bottle. They replaced it. Now you have to apply pressure to the bottle cap to hold a vacumn. The pump itself seems fine, but they need to redesign the seal on the bottle cap.

The seal on the bottle was also messed up on mine, but i just fliped it over and that part worked fine.

In my case the actual pump wasnt sealing all the time. A tiny bit of clutch fuid dribbled in helped get it sealed, at least enough to get the job done when i had to change the slave cyl after breaking off the bleeder post. (grr)

Honestly, I think one of the best things any local group could do is run a seminar on how to bleed a hydraulic system!!!!
from the number of posts on brakes and clutch system bleeding issues, I think that would be an excellent help for most of the people here.
As far as the vacuum units, I used to have one, might still be in my junk boxes somewhere, my father bought it,
thought it would be great for doing brakes. he tried it once. his description: I spent 2 hours getting it to work right, got one wheel done, then threw it back in the box got your mother to step on the brakes and was done with the other 3 in 20 minutes.

now for the clutch issues, I think the biggest issue is flakey components for some, and one minor misstep for the rest, the slave cylinder purge. if you look at how the master is made, when the pedal is not pressed, fluid can flow back to the master. this is to allow for the self adjusting function. now if the slave bleed has any restriction at all, it can force air back into the line when you pull the piston in. that is why they want the bleed out all the way. The way to be sure of this is to hold the clutch pedal down when compressing the slave, then it is not possible to force air back into the line. (unless of course your master is shot).

quote Originally posted by tjm4fun: Honestly, I think one of the best things any local group could do is run a seminar on how to bleed a hydraulic system!!!! from the number of posts on brakes and clutch system bleeding issues, I think that would be an excellent help for most of the people here. As far as the vacuum units, I used to have one, might still be in my junk boxes somewhere, my father bought it, thought it would be great for doing brakes. he tried it once. his description: I spent 2 hours getting it to work right, got one wheel done, then threw it back in the box got your mother to step on the brakes and was done with the other 3 in 20 minutes. now for the clutch issues, I think the biggest issue is flakey components for some, and one minor misstep for the rest, the slave cylinder purge. if you look at how the master is made, when the pedal is not pressed, fluid can flow back to the master. this is to allow for the self adjusting function. now if the slave bleed has any restriction at all, it can force air back into the line when you pull the piston in. that is why they want the bleed out all the way. The way to be sure of this is to hold the clutch pedal down when compressing the slave, then it is not possible to force air back into the line. (unless of course your master is shot).

I agree bad components, I had all sorts of trouble trying to bleed the system replaced the master and slave and bingo no trouble bleeding at all, my clutch pedal is once again about an inch higher than the brake pedal (without replacing the pedal) and a point of interest it seems I got a bad new master, I could not get the thing to work I bled and bled no air in the system but would not shift, I noticed that the fluid level was rising in the master when the clutch pedal was down and held, got a replacement and I bled the system in about 10 minutes using Archies instuctions.

[This message has been edited by samt (edited 04-27-2007).]

quote Originally posted by User00013170: If you go this route, dont get the cheaper version like i did. Damned thing doesn't hold a vacuum well. The one i got also had a gauge, figured it could be dual use, both bleeding brakes and checking for vacuum leaks..

I purchased the one at sears for 129.99 shown here.

It works really well for me. I can bleed my brakes and my clutch in about five minutes. I only suggested the other one because it was cheap, didn't really think that it would be that bad of quality considering it was the same brand.

i don't do any of this stuff. I put a clear hose on the bleeder, loop it up about 5" and then down into a bottle. I fill the master and let it go. I don't push, press, etc anything. I've never had clutch problems. I must be lucky.

Check this thread..I made my own system..near the end of the thread
Nick
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...060206-2-065076.html