Clutch not working when hot

[82DMC12]

Sorry to hear of your trouble 82DMC12. I took mine out for a test drive and I do believe my clutch is working good now. The car wasn’t running very good though. Almost seems like bad gas. Twice I could only get it started by holding the pedal to the floor. I don’t really understand that because, as I see it, the pedal doesn’t really do anything until the motor is running. I guess I need to study some more.

Thanks for the sympathy :-)

It could definitely be bad gas. The car should be easy to start with the transmission in neutral and not touching the throttle at all - just turn the key and it should start (assuming everything else is set up and tuned properly). I know the sun visor has instructions for starting the car but I don't follow them. It actually seems harder to start if you follow them. I just sit down, push in the clutch, confirm neutral, and turn the key.

If it only starts if you mash the gas pedal while cranking, that sounds like poor mixture or poor fuel quality. You're allowing more air to go into the engine which is eventually getting you lucky enough to hit the right ratio of fuel vs air so it starts and keeps running.

[82DMC12]

So I know this totally isn't my thread (I'm not OP) but I did post a few times in it about a different clutch problem and I want to help future readers know how I diagnosed my own issue. My problem is the clutch had been bled out with no external visible leaks but yet sometimes especially when cold I had hard time getting into gear from neutral (and once had a hard time getting out of reverse) while at the same time, the clutch was dragging while the pedal was in. Not a very safe situation!

I have a Motive power bleeder for my brakes and I decided to make an adapter for the clutch reservoir. There are a couple fittings from Motive that sound like they should work but they don't. One of them is "Classic British Adapter" but that one didn't fit. I read somewhere else that the clutch reservoir cap is the same as VW air cooled brake reservoir but then someone else said the VW Air Cooled Motive adapter doesn't work either. I also read that the cap from a pint of brake fluid works, but I only Castrol brake fluid and that cap is too big. Well what DID work is the cap from a quart of Toro lawn mower oil. Perfect fit. I drilled a 1/2" hole in the cap and threaded a hose barb into it and cut a rubber washer to fit the inside of the cap. Then added 5/16" ID clear tubing and connected it to the Motive.

In this way, I can now power bleed the clutch. I did manage to get a couple more air bubbles out.

I also checked the reservoir while my wife pumped the clutch because I was told by Rob Grady that if the seal on the end of the clutch master is bad, you should see bubbles or turbulence in the reservoir while pumping. I saw one bubble come up but after about 30 pumps, nothing. Despite the good bleed, I could still hear the fork "tink tink tinking" while the clutch is depressed and it's very slowly retracting back inside. That's what's causing my dragging clutch.

In the end, I think all my flushing has made a slight seep from the clutch slave cylinder because it's more oily than grimy in the boot up there last night then it was the last couple times I was working on this. I'm just going to replace both the master and the slave and then I should be confident my clutch is 100% again.

PXL_20220706_013625805.jpg

[Helirich]

Thanks for the sympathy :-)

It could definitely be bad gas. The car should be easy to start with the transmission in neutral and not touching the throttle at all - just turn the key and it should start (assuming everything else is set up and tuned properly). I know the sun visor has instructions for starting the car but I don't follow them. It actually seems harder to start if you follow them. I just sit down, push in the clutch, confirm neutral, and turn the key.

If it only starts if you mash the gas pedal while cranking, that sounds like poor mixture or poor fuel quality. You're allowing more air to go into the engine which is eventually getting you lucky enough to hit the right ratio of fuel vs air so it starts and keeps running.

Did I say it keeps running? Lol. It keeps running if I rev it. Don’t have time to look at it right now. Probably another thread. Lol.

Edit, I took too long to decide what to write here. Anyways, great work on the power bleeder. My clutch seems to be fixed, so anyone is welcome to post clutch issues or fixes on this thread.

[82DMC12]

Did I say it keeps running? Lol. It keeps running if I rev it. Don’t have time to look at it right now. Probably another thread. Lol.

I had a similar problem after replacing the O-ring under my fuel distributor. My old one was mashed down and I had set my CO with it like that. When I installed a new o-ring as part of an intake rebuild, the new thicker o-ring changed the vertical relationship of the metering pin to the roller bearing so my CO was way out of whack. I had to reset it by pulling the injectors and richening until they started to leak, then backed off until they just stopped dripping again. Then I was back in the right ballpark and the car would start and idle again.