Date:         Sun, 5 Oct 2003 12:39:14 -0700
Reply-To:     phlogiston@ISPWEST.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Bravo Sierra <phlogiston@ISPWEST.COM>
Subject:      clutch hydraulics
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

well first thanks to everyone who offered me advice when i got stuck in boulder, co...  i ended up at wolfsburg, where they determined a bad injector to be my problem and i got back on the road for a lot cheaper than i had expected.  they seemed to do good work and be very professional there, but i had a hard time actually talking to the mechanic; they tried very hard to make me only communicate through the receptionist.

anyway, now i am in ithaca, new york and as i was getting here the other night, i noticed that my clutch pedal was offering less resistance than usual and that sometimes i had to push really hard to get from neutral into first.


i looked at both the clutch master and slave cylinders, and i don't see any leaking fluid at either.  the fluid is supposed to be new because i had some brake work done earlier this year and asked them to flush the hydraulic system, however now i'm skeptical that this was actually done because sometimes when i'm sitting at a stop the brake pedal will sink to the floor and i have to pump it to get any resistance back in the pedal.

so does that point to contaminated brake fluid that needs to be bled out?  or could both of those be explained by bad clutch and brake master cylinders?


i looked in the bently manual, and for a bleeding procedure they refer to some specific tool, i guess the vw power bleeder.  is there any problem (other than requiring two people and lots of time) with bleeding the clutch manually?  is the correct procedure to have someone step on the pedal and hold it down, then open the bleeder screw, then close it, then have the pedal released?  or should the screw be opened before the pedal is depressed?

thanks.

Ben.