Clutch free play and Red Hose Syndrome

[dr.ian]

Hello everyone, I changed my hose today and had a question. The gears shift easy and I bled the system real good. However, it seems that there is a slight more free play in the pedal. Maybe it is just the difference in materials. Does anyone know what the free play is suppost to be? I may just give it a little adjustment at the pedal.

[lotusguy]

dr.ian said:

Hello everyone, I changed my hose today and had a question. The gears shift easy and I bled the system real good. However, it seems that there is a slight more free play in the pedal. Maybe it is just the difference in materials. Does anyone know what the free play is suppost to be? I may just give it a little adjustment at the pedal.

Hi,

I assume that you changed your Red Hose for a SS one. Since the SS hose won't expand when pressurised by the master cylinder, it should have less free-play in the system rather than more.

This leads me to believe that despite having bled the system real good as you say, that there is still some air in the system. The best way to bleed the car is with the front raised slightly so that the air can rise to the Master Cylinder.

Absent any air in the system, you may have a less than optimally operating Master or Slave or both. With the old Red Hose, the backpressure to the Master is less by the amount of expansion of the old hose than what it experiences with the non-expanding SS hose. Consequently, once you switch hoses, especially with a used Master and slave, you may have increased the back pressure sufficiently to exceed the threshold that the older seals are capable of and may have some slight leakage past the seals. I would always recommend to anyone that when replacing the hose, to include a Master and Slave rebuild, just a few bucks more, not a difficult job, but you have an entirely new system.

Try re-bleeding it and if you still find it wanting, you may think about rebuilding the Master and Slave. Another caveat about a system is that it may not be totally disengaging the clutch which would result in accelerated wear to the friction disk, and more importantly, superheating, hotspotting and tempering the very expensive flywheel. Hope this helps. Happy Motoring!... Jim'85TE