Master cylinder testing

[A.J.M]

Hello,

Have a 04 freelander td4, it's recently been suffering from a soft clutch pedal and issues with selecting gears. 3rd and 4th mainly.
The pedal has an inch or so of deal travel with no feel before firming up for the rest of the travel.
The fluid level is at max do there is no fluid leaking out the system.
The RAC and my local garage have both strong belief that the master cylinder is at fault, with a sticking piston being likely.

However, I have had the slave and master cylinder changed in may 10 with brand new genuine landrover parts.

The garage can supply and fit a new genuine landrover master cylinder for £235. Which is ok but I want to be sure that will solve my problem before I spend the cash. As I don't want to spend it and find the problem is the slave cylinder.

So is there a test that can be done to check if it is working as supposed to? If so what is it?

And also any ideas how a 21 month old part can fail.

[adyady1066]

Best advice I can give is to get it on a rolling tester and check the braking power across the axles diagonally. Usually when a master fails it will lose power on front right and rear left and vice versa for the other side of the master. If it is failing you will get poor readings on diagonally opposite sides of the car. If you only have poor readings on one then it could be air in the system and needs bleeding (this can sometimes happens but not often) or a sticky caliper / collapsed hose. If you have failings across the axles at the rear then it could be a troublesome weight compensator valve which often become stuck, if you have no pressure at all on all four it's a good sign that the master has failed totally yet you would normally have loss of fluid from the master itself where the seals have popped. Get it to an MOT station and slip them a drink to put it on the testers and get their impression before spending money on a new master again. Hope it helps.

[Steve_D]

adyady1066 said:

Best advice I can give is to get it on a rolling tester and check the braking power across the axles diagonally. Usually when a master fails it will lose power on front right and rear left and vice versa for the other side of the master. If it is failing you will get poor readings on diagonally opposite sides of the car. If you only have poor readings on one then it could be air in the system and needs bleeding (this can sometimes happens but not often) or a sticky caliper / collapsed hose. If you have failings across the axles at the rear then it could be a troublesome weight compensator valve which often become stuck, if you have no pressure at all on all four it's a good sign that the master has failed totally yet you would normally have loss of fluid from the master itself where the seals have popped. Get it to an MOT station and slip them a drink to put it on the testers and get their impression before spending money on a new master again. Hope it helps.

Good advice but not relevant to a clutch problem.

Steve

[garagewidow]

to check the master cyl,disconnect pipe,screw in a bolt with same thread not to tight,pump a few times and put pressure on pedal.
does it creep down?if so could be worn or damaged seals or bore.
make sure fluid is not leaking past bolt threads first though.
sonds like you could still have air in it too.

[A.J.M]

Well from a few calls to the garage that did the original work, it turns out that dispite being told I was getting landrover parts fitted. I didn't. I got a cheap aftermarket part instead.

System reservior is now empty of fluid and I have no clutch anymore. The cars parked outside the house in 3rd gear and will need recovered back to the garage.

Also, this means I have a cheap aftermarket slave cylinder as well.
So I'm not holding out faith on that working for long.

The reservior is full of black gunk as well. Could this be parts of the seals that have broken up?

[SWR Performance]

I would think the "black gunk" is the remains of the cheap aftermarket seals basically just dissolved in the fluid. Seen that happen a few times, the seals seem to have been made with the cheapest natural rubber compound they could find, with barely any resistance to chemicals..

[A.J.M]

So my slave cylinder is at risk as well now?

The car did have judder when pulling away in 1st and reverse gears, not always but has been getting more frequent.
Will this be linked to the issues?

I did get a new clutch fitted at the same time as the other work so it will have covered 18k but given the durability of current parts, would it be bad to say I could be looking at a full clutch renewal soon.

[Steve_D]

The black gunk may be an indication that the wrong fluid has been used.

Steve

[A.J.M]

Shall find out in the next day or two, since it cant move as the clutch is fked.
I shall be using my well used RAC card, again, and a van will turn up. Say, "aye mate, it's fked"
Then get a recovery truck (again) to take the car to a garage. (again)



I might be giving the idea that the above process has been done before, for the same issue.

Garage will be using genuine LR part, and im praying the slave cylinder is fine. If not then the garage needs to send it to another garage as the slave is a gearbox and front subframe out job to change. Which is 7 hours labour to do, then the slave cylinder and whatever else is up.

I hate cheap parts, just wish i had been told it was getting cheap parts fitted as i would have demanded genuine ones.

[A.J.M]

To be fair, the entire ownership of this car has been one sorry story of crap garage to crap garage.
Got royally screwed over by an indi LR garage who caused more hassle than worth. The original clutch was fine till that garage started working on the car, then it slowly packed in, to be replaced in june 10, now i need to change it again.

I just need it sorted properly, i was going to upgrade later in the year but i fear i will be paying my new car deposit to get it fixed.

Ah well, maybe next year.

Shall report back on the findings, im going to burn that cylinder personally to make me feel better.

[camelotr]

If the system is loosing fluid, it is leaking somewhere - obvious . Such great amount must be visible, soo detecting the source of the defect should not be a problem. If the parts are at inaccesable position, You may consider using a mirror and lamp.

The system can leak at: master cylinder seal, slave cylinder seal, at any pipe junction (not tightened properly after the work?)and finaly at the air bleed point.

You may also save money on the transport as if the system is only loosing the fluid slowly, then filling it properly ( and bleeding) will enable You to ge to the garage on the cars own power.