Thread: 73 RRC Bleeding Clutch

Hi Garfy,
Bleeding the clutch is a common trauma. The only way that I could do it ( with assistance) was to apply air pressure to the fluid reservoir and have some one pump while I bleed from underneath at the slave. I just used a small cheap air pump ( Kmart variety) and hooked a plastic tube to it and made a very crude plug to go over the resevoir(held by hand) and had the air pump going whilst pumping the clutch pedal and bleeding. ( a word of caution is not to have a great seal as too high a pressure will cause other problems, I did mine around 10 psi) It tooks a few seconds to pressure the pedal. Without the air pressure set up I had been trying to get pressure by just pumping the pedal and bleeding for hours and got nowhere. Hope this is of assistance to you.

Have you tried to just gravity bleed it. Pedal in upper position, fill reserviour to top and open / remove bleed screw. Gravity will pull fluid down through and eventually start dripping from bleed hole in slave cyl. It will take a while sometimes so go make a coffee (or get a cold one). Sometimes it might need a bit of encouragement to start heading through the system so you can put a tube on the bleed nipple and suck it through. You can decide how your gonna do that as you might get a mouth full of fluid. No air ends up in the system this way and if the fluid starts dripping freely from the bleed nipple just lock it off and you should have a pedal.

If you need to bleed it further after this read below.

I am not sure of your mechanical know how and dont want to tell you how to suck eggs, but if you are not sure on how to bleed a clutch system you cannot just keep lifting/pumping the pedal up and down as this will generally just suck air in and out of the bleed nipple.

Proceedure is as follows - (with 2 people hopefully)
pedal up and fill reserviour
pedal down and then open bleed nipple and then close belled nipple
pedal up and wait a few second for fluid to be sucked into the master cylinder from the reservior.
pedal down and then open bleed nipple and close again.......and keep following this sequence (dont lift the pedal with the bleed nipple open).

This method will take a while but is the right way to do it. Clutches can be a headache to bleed. Should be so simple as there is not much to the clutch system.

By the way? Is there a fluid damper in the pipe line between the master cyl and slave cyl like on early discoveries. I kept loosing the clutch pedal with no leaks on my 94 300tdi disco and had to replace the fluid damper which is in the pipeline between the master cyl and slave cyl.

Sorry for writing so much, not much else to do today

Hope this all helps

G'day Garfy

The Range Rover Classic has it's clutch Master cylinder on a slight incline, which tends to get an airlock in the very end of the cylinder,I would suggest that to get the cylinder horizontal it would be advisable to reverse up a set of ramps,then with the cylinder horizontal or slightly facing down then you can remove all air as described by "Davrac"


cheers

Just to further confuse the issue:
On the RR classic clutch master cylinder to slave pipe, rises after the master cylinder, goes across the firewall and heads down to the slave. The air collects in this horizontal pipe and is very hard to displace, via the pedal pumping method.
I made up a pressurised brake fluid container and had a tube from this to the slave bleeder, and thus forced the fluid backwards through the system. The fluid builds up in the master cylinder reservoir, and you may need to suck some out to avoid overflowing.
Typically if the reservoir was empty, the bleed had worked by the time the fluid was near full.

This Forum never ceases to amaze , I have no doubt that at least one of your methods will work and I like yourselves will use the one that works best for me or alternatively use the first one and if it works will put it to bed to fight another day !
Respect
Garfy

Originally Posted by rrturboD

Just to further confuse the issue:
On the RR classic clutch master cylinder to slave pipe, rises after the master cylinder, goes across the firewall and heads down to the slave. The air collects in this horizontal pipe and is very hard to displace, via the pedal pumping method.
I made up a pressurised brake fluid container and had a tube from this to the slave bleeder, and thus forced the fluid backwards through the system. The fluid builds up in the master cylinder reservoir, and you may need to suck some out to avoid overflowing.
Typically if the reservoir was empty, the bleed had worked by the time the fluid was near full.

Just to add my 2 cents - this method works well, and is also my preferred method, however if you don't have (or want to make) a pressurised brake fluid container, you can also use the brakes to bleed the clutch in a similar way. Run a pipe between a brake bleeder nipple, and across to the clutch bleed nipple. By opening/closing the brake bleeder, and pumping the brakes, you can achieve the same result, although you will need 2 people to do this, and keep an eye on the brake fluid reservoir, or you can end up having to bleed the brakes back up as well . This is how a couple of European car manufactures suggest bleeding thier clutches. I use to use this method in reverse to do the brakes on my Honda bike - use the clutch master to pressure bleed the brakes.