MAD CLUTCH PROBLEMS!!! | Page 4 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

MAD CLUTCH PROBLEMS!!!

if anyone can help now it would be greatly appreciated...

we have everything back in but we can't get the air out of the system. more and more air just keeps coming out. there is a new master clutch cylinder in there and slave and everything, but air just keeps coming out. we have bled it for like an hour or two but still no pressure in the system. pedal feels like butter. mix of fluid and air coming out. slave looks fine through the inspection cover, compressed a bit against the pressure plate.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





josh this was the part that I heard was a nightmare. I guess it takes quite some time. Give it a few pumps leave the pedal to the floor open the bleeder, clse the bleeder rleases to pedal, check your level, repeat. That all I can tell you
 






Well, we bled it for like an hour or two, but it was stil FUBAR. Thinking somethin was up, TDG ripped back apart the stuff and brought the tranny back again. I was upsatirs posting on here, but he pumped a bunch directly on the slave cylinder or something, and somehow got pressure in there. Hey, its all good cuz it works like a charm and took us all over Joshua Tree Nat. Park this whoel weekend. Well, this is about the end of the install part of the thread, but it should be a good informative for the general public:D
 






Glad to hear that everything went ok, and is working fine. I slipped my clutch really bad yesterday so it looks like I'll be doing mine this weekend
 












I got my clutch installed today. What a workout that was. It took about 13hrs total. I certainly hope that it will go quicker. If I ever have to do it again, god I hope not. I am so glad that you had done this right before I was ready to do mine. I had a pretty good idea of what was going to have to happen to get it done. This post is really going to help out anyone else that has to put one in that might be a little bit sketchy about what needs to be done.
 






Glad to hear you got yers in OK man. Did you replace it with a motorcraft one er what? Hopefully that thing'll hold up with that nice supercharger you got!!! Mine is runnin pretty good so far.

Oh and I went on the Joshua Tree Rebel4x4 run last weekend, and had to pull out a fullsize Dodge truck. The thing was tipped down on the front end in a bigass hole. I threw it in lowrange and gave it a tug, and reportedly, it pulled the whole back end of the dodge down purty good b4 pullin it up outta the hole. Clutch definetely held up real nice and gave a lotta power to the wheels...All hail to Centerforce Dual Friction!!!
 






Actually josh I replaced it with a SPEC stage II kevlar clutch. It hold much better than the stocker. i have a 400 mile break in so the won't be any smoky burnouts for a while. I think that I am going to bleed the clutch so more to see if i can get a little morer pedal feel. It just feels softer that it was before. I forgot to tell you the the slave cylinder that I had in mine before I replaced it looked just like the one you got from Kragen. Oh well there must be a reason why Ford redesigned it.
 






Yah I had a 4-500 mile break-in too on my clutch where I wasn't supposed to drive on the freeway or offroad or anything. Well that wasn't gonna happen cuz we went straight out to our offroading trip. I guess I got about 100 freeway miles on it before rompin.

Yah mine was super hard to get pressure in. Even after we finished everything, it was still a bit messed up...like rough shifts and stuff. We didn't have anymore time to mess with it so we just went and it built up nice pressure and shifts smooth now.

The only problem is that when I go like 1 mph and lock the steering wheel, the whole truck will chug forward and be like bam bam bam from underneath or the rear end or sumthin. This is with it in 1st gear with the clutch pushed in. Any ideas? Could it just be the Detroit?
 






SO let me get this straight, clutch pushed in and you are still going 1mph, with a bam bam bam from some where, LOL, I don't have a clue dude. If your clutch is in and your moving forward there is a problem though.
 






yah i dunno man. clutch is in and its in gear. if the clutch is in and its in neutral, it aint a problem. I dont know wtf it is, probly sumthin with my tranny i guess...or maybe the Detroit but I don't think it would be that because the in gear/outta gear thing.:(
 






If your moving forward with your clutch depressed and in gear your pressure plate isn't releasing fully. I'd try to bleed the salve again. It sounds like it's not disengaging fully. I have no idea what the bam is.
 












Originally posted by Josh S.
yah i dunno man. clutch is in and its in gear. if the clutch is in and its in neutral, it aint a problem. I dont know wtf it is, probly sumthin with my tranny i guess...

I found this :)

"The hydraulic clutch, slave cylinder/throwout bearing is another item you should pay close attention to. After time, the slave cylinder fails to release the clutch completely. If you are having trouble shifting into 1st and reverse while stationary or if your truck creeps forward with the clutch pedal depressed the slave cylinder/throwout bearing is probably at fault. Unfortunately there is no easy fix here as the transmission must be removed to replace the combination slave cylinder and throwout bearing."

Found it here: Under Mazda 5 speed
 






We know that the slave isn't bad. It probably just needs to be bleed some more.
 






Hi guys!
Maybe is a dumb suggestion, but checking in my Hayes manual I found that the clutch must be aligned with the pressure plate before assembly. A special tool is intended to do that.
Other important thing is mark the flywheel and the pressure plate before dissasembly to keep the same alignment during installation.
I guess that all those procedures must be performed in order to keep the factory balance of the clutch components. Don't forget that they spin at high RPM when you drive and any disbalance can cause noticeable noise and vibration, and possibly damage to the components.
So guys, do you make this procedures?

I hope you did

Good luck

Andy;)
 






Yeah, it's not too complicated.

You want to mark the pressure plate, if reusing, and the flywheel, if removing, in order to keep it in the same alignment. I suggest not reusing the pressure plate though, if your clutch is wore out, then the pressure plate is too, after all the trouble of removing tranny you might as well replace it, along with throwout bearing and the slave in our case.

As far as the alignment tool, it is just a simple splined plastic shaft that slips on the end of the trans input shaft so that clutch stays centered and will match up with the crankshaft. Most all clutch kits come with this tool, although I have heard of people simply using a broomstick. Bolt down the pressure plate and remove alignment tool.
 






I couldn't find the traditional alignment tool with the splines on it anywhere, even though its sposed to be like $1, but I ended up buying one that has a buncha different sizes on it. As lonestar said, its just for lining up the input shaft with the clutch disk, so if you don't have it aligned, the trans won't go back on. If you can get your trans back on, theen you know you did it right. Also as lonestar explained, you wanna keep the pressure plate and flywheel in the same positions relative to the balancing tabs. This is only in cases of reusing the pressure plate and is not important (from my understanding) if installing a new disc and pressure plate. I asked around a bunch and everybody said that it was not necessary to balance the two together.

My clutch is holding up quite nicely though...haven't bled it any more, but maybe I will eventually if somethin happens. Hows yours going ipozestu?
 






my clutch is cherry. I ended up bleeding it again. Git some more pedal pressure back, and it engages into first and reverse much better. Does it Grab??? Hell Yea. I rev'ed it up the other day popped the clutch and left a nice smoky two wheel patch about 25' long. I would have never been able to do that with the old clutch. It just would have slipped like crazy. I am really happy that I did the replacement myself. I know how it is done now, what to do and what not to do, and most of all I have piece of mind knowing that everything was done right, torqued to spec, completed properly.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.











Back
Top