seajai and I spent this past weekend tearing the engine out of my 86GT and replacing the timing set (1+ inch of play without the guide), water pump, oil pan gasket and the flywheel/clutch/pressure plate and throwout bearing.
We installed a brand new Fiero Store HD Clutch kit for the car to replace an oil contaminated clutch that shifted just fine but would slip under load in fourth or fifth gear when accelerating. The clutch hydraulic system was not opened, and worked fine prior to this clutch being installed, and the slave and master are new within the last four years or so.
The pedal feels normal, with the slave moving on a 1:1 ratio with the pedal. There is no delay when I push the pedal to when the slave extends, and I have full range of motion. The pedal is not bent, and the banjo is straight. I've already ordered a new slave as we can't break the bleed screw loose and will be replacing and rebleeding the system.
Has anyone else had this type of issue with this particular clutch? It doesn't feel as if there is air in the line. The clutch pedal feels normal without any additional load on it compared to the previous clutch.
PS: I can start the car in gear and it will run, though it is bogged down due to the clutch being slightly engaged, even with the pedal on the floor.
I installed one of those and could not turn the engine over- Found that the pressure plate was machined wrong- basically it's a 4spd PP- They sent me a new one that will clear the trany. It had cut a small groove in the trany case. Try to turn the engine with a breaker bar on the Balancer bolt- If it doesn't turn relatively easy....Pull it apart and check the height of the pressure plate- Compare it to your old one....The ridge on the trany side will obviously stick up higher. This may not be your problem.
I installed one of those and could not turn the engine over- Found that the pressure plate was machined wrong- basically it's a 4spd PP- They sent me a new one that will clear the trany. It had cut a small groove in the trany case. Try to turn the engine with a breaker bar on the Balancer bolt- If it doesn't turn relatively easy....Pull it apart and check the height of the pressure plate- Compare it to your old one....The ridge on the trany side will obviously stick up higher. This may not be your problem.
Thanks for the input. The engine starts without issue and idles great. The problem appears to be that the clutch isn't fully releasing when I press the pedal to the floor. I can start it in gear with one foot on the clutch and one on the brake, but the car wants to roll. I'm going to put in a new slave cylinder tomorrow and vacuum bleed the system to make sure I don't have any air in the clutch. The only reason I'm installing a new slave is because the bleeder bolt won't come loose.
I just figured I'd see if anyone had any other ideas, considering the clutch worked beautifully prior to the change (not counting the slippage).
I just figured I'd see if anyone had any other ideas, considering the clutch worked beautifully prior to the change (not counting the slippage).
Keeping in mind that your old clutch was slipping, that's probably the reason you weren't noticing disengagement problems prior to installing the new clutch (which will obviously be much more grabby).
The new slave (hopefully you ordered a dual-seal Dickman unit) with a good bleed will probably eliminate your issues.
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 05-09-2016).]
Since you replaced the clutch (as a kit) I'd replace the clutch master and slave while you are there. Even the clutch line, as you might have difficulty removing the line off the slave. If you can't crack the slave bleeder open, chances are the bottom line can be seized too. This happened to me one of my 88GTs. It had the original slave and on removal the bottom slave inlet snapped.
Patrick is on the money...get Rodney's clutch master and slave. Every fiero owner should be buying those clutch parts from him...everything else is garbage or won't last long. Cheaper is not better.
Even though you didn't "open" the system, when you removed the slave cylinder the piston was allowed to fully extend in the bore. It had been 4+ years since it was last allowed to expand that far, the bore surface was likely not pristine in the un-traveled area (especially if there was a hole in the dust boot), and allowed some air to enter as it passed over the rougher surface.
Tried a vacuum bleeder, that pulled a lot of air, but we continuously got air bubbles. Tried manually and gravity bleeding. Clutch would work, short term. Then would stop working unless I pumped the clutch.
We even built a vacuum bottle and used an AC vacuum pump to suck fluid through the line. We continued to get air.
The master is an O'Reilly special. The slave is a Dickman getrag slave in good condition. I replaced the slave with an O'Reilly special. We had the same issues.
Today I ordered a Rodney Dickman master and a new clutch line from TFS. The master should be here tomorrow. The line, sometime next week.
This is where it sits... Hope we can get it running enough to drive this weekend. Don't think the line itself is leaking anywhere, though it has been patched due to rust. We'll try and get it back on the lift before Friday night.
Just wanted to put a "We fixed it" note here... Too many things on the internet without a solution.
The new master came in from Rodney. I bench bled it and then installed it. We also "blocked" the Rodney slave cylinder. This is where you remove the cylinder from the mount, compress the piston to the bottom and hold it in place with a C clamp or something else. In this case, we used a harmonic balancer puller with a couple of bolts, compressed the piston so that we had no air space in the system at all, and then vacuum bled the line.
The neat trick to this was taking an empty water bottle, drilling a 1/4" hole in the cap and filling it with brake fluid. Place the bottle upside down in the clutch master, and when the fluid gets low, it acts as a hamster bottle and refills the master so that you never get that gasp of air from not checking in time. To test for leaks or air in the line, we then sealed the system up, and gently put pressure on the clutch to look for sponginess in the pedal. We discovered that the bleeder screw leaks a little bit unless you really crank down on it. This is likely just because of some corrosion in the threads. When I get the new clutch line in I'll replace the bleeder screw at the same time with a new one.
All in all, we had the clutch up and running in short order, and all of our air bubble problems went away.
Bleeding it using the normal methods didn't seem to work, so I suspect the master may have been having some problems to begin with.
