Soft Clutch Pedal?

[technophile]

Hi all,

On the last day of my trip back to Perth with the defender i noticed the clutch was becoming easier the push in, but as everything was working fine, and i had been driving for 5 hours straight, i thought nothing of it.

Today i went to move it, the defender, and the clutch was very easy to depress, one finger would do it. The last inch or so it did become a little harder, but every so slightly. I was also unable to out it into first, any gear for that matter. after 10 minutes of stuffing around i managed to get it into second, and was able to move it. My first thought was a fluid leak, but on inspection of the drive way there was no fluid, and the reservoir fluid was at the right level. So next thought was air in the system, after bleeding the system there was no appreciable increase in pressure.

so that's my troubleshooting done.

Does anyone here have any ideas what it could be or what i should be checking to eliminate possible triggers?

thanks

[FFR]

Hi,

There is a failure I have seen in three cars: the rubber seals get slightly bigger (because of age, wear...) so the hole that allows the oil to go from the plastic bottle to the master cylinder gets jammed, preventing new oil from enterning into the cilynder. This means that there is no oil to pump, so the pedal goes easily down to the carpet, but the clutch can not be disengaged.

In a Patrol I had (yes, everybody has a past) the pedal simply fell to the floor and it had to be moved up by hand.

But you have mentioned that you have purged the circuit: this means that your master cylinder is pumping oil.


Does your pedal get hard when you pump quickly with your hand?

Hopefully I am wrong, but you might have develop a hole in the clutch arm. The slave cylinder goes to its full extended position driven by the pressure generated by the master cylinder... but it goes there effortlessly because the arm has a hole...

Maybe someone has the right answer, and it is not that bad as mine :o

[jimr1]

;) hi many years ago i also had a problem with a clutch pedal, it turnd out to be a broken spring in the master cylinder. It was an easy and cheap fix. I hope , your problem is the same good luck. jimr1 ..

[wrinklearthur]

Before you go pulling engines, gearboxes and throwing them about to get at your Land Rover's clutch innards, first do an adjustment check, inside the plate over the clutch pedal pivot.

On some really rough corrugations, I had a push rod suddenly seat it's self into the dimple on the throwout race lever, that being the correct position. :redface: , Fifty Lashes to the slack mechanic who had replaced the slave cylinder last!! ---- me.

The clutch pedal suddenly went from full working height with a full pedal, down to working correctly some near the floor and had I known, I could have adjusted it up to where it would have operated properly from there on.

I unnecessarily brought a complete clutch overhaul kit, throwout lever to which I modified the pivot point and fitted the lot. That left me with good spares that I have since fitted some of into 'Fred', so very little in the way of parts was wasted, only the time and effort was lost.
.

[technophile]

Hi all,

Have been really busy so haven't had much more time to troubleshoot the problem, but after emptying, re filling and bleeding it seems to be working perfectly again. Based on this I suspect it to wear in one of the cylinder barrels or a rubber seal, although I still haven't found any leaks, so my co**** of action will be to replace the seals and too line the barrels with a stainless sleeve.

Thanks for your input.