180SX Update
As I hinted at last week, Brett's 180 has been losing fluid from the hydraulic clutch, since he took delivery of it in fact. At first we figured the fluid must be leaking out of the slave cylinder, as no obvious leaks were visible from the master cylinder. Although we couldn't see any fluid around the slave cylinder, we assumed that was the location of the leak and Brett has been regularly topping up the fluid to maintain decent clutch operation.
This week we found out differently though. One morning on the way to work he noticed his clutch pedal was unusually slippery. After he arrived he felt the area around the pedal and found the surrounding carpet soaked with hydraulic fluid! Well, he'd found the leak... Straight out of the master cylinder and onto the near perfect Nissan floor mat underneath.
So armed with this knowledge and a seal kit for the master cylinder, we set about changing it on Friday night. Under the illumination of my new 500W flood light, it was a relatively easy job removing the pump. The only big hassle was getting the fiercely tight flare nut out of the cylinder. Initial efforts took some of the edge off the fastener (ok so it was almost rounded) but success was had by lightly tapping with a small peen hammer before clamping a flare nut spanner on with some vice grips, VERY TIGHT! Brett is a strong advocate of lightly tapping stuck fasteners with a hammer before trying to loosen them and I must say I haven't seen it fail on him yet. Still, it's funny to listen to him defend the practice, "It's not dodgy! Honest!"
As we stripped the master cylinder down, we found that it was full of this dark gray sludgy stuff. Possibly some effort to stop the leak by the dealer? Who knows, but it had to be cleaned. So we broke out the methylated spirits bathed the parts in the fluid while brushing with an artists paint brush. Once clean the parts were are dried with some low pressure compressed air.
Reassembly was easy enough, a little rubber grease around the seals made sure they weren't torn when pushed back into the cylinder. The unit was re-installed with the flare nut being carefully tightened again with the spanner-and-clamp routine used to prevent rounding off. The reservoir was filled with some fresh fluid and we undid the nipple on the slave cylinder. As it turned out, the clutch system took quite a bit of fluid to get it back into operation. There are two bleeding nipples, one on the slave cylinder and another on what seems to be a manifold attached to the inside of the chassis rail on the right hand side. I recommend bleeding the nipple on the chassis rail first, followed by the slave cylinder. Be prepared to go back and bleed the chassis rail manifold again though, as more air can get trapped in there. Remember to continually top up the fluid in the reservoir, as letting the level drop too low will just allow more air into the system, resulting in more fluid being wasted to get it out, not to mention the patience and leg muscles of the person doing the pedal pushing.
An easy way to tell if the system is bled properly is to leave the pedal alone for several minutes, then pump it several times in succession. The feel of the pedal shouldn't change over the course of the pedal operations. If it does, there's a good chance you've still got air in the line. After about two hours in total we had fixed the leak in the clutch master cylinder and Brett noticed the clutch felt a lot more positive in its action now. At the conclusion of this we sat back and recollected how this should have been the state the car was in when he bought it from the dealer. This sentiment gave way to excitement though as the car was now in a state where it would accept the future mods we had planned for it from the start (and was probably worth more than when he bought it several weeks ago as supplies of low volume imports start to dry up).
So where to from here? You'll just have to stay tuned to see...
This week we found out differently though. One morning on the way to work he noticed his clutch pedal was unusually slippery. After he arrived he felt the area around the pedal and found the surrounding carpet soaked with hydraulic fluid! Well, he'd found the leak... Straight out of the master cylinder and onto the near perfect Nissan floor mat underneath.
So armed with this knowledge and a seal kit for the master cylinder, we set about changing it on Friday night. Under the illumination of my new 500W flood light, it was a relatively easy job removing the pump. The only big hassle was getting the fiercely tight flare nut out of the cylinder. Initial efforts took some of the edge off the fastener (ok so it was almost rounded) but success was had by lightly tapping with a small peen hammer before clamping a flare nut spanner on with some vice grips, VERY TIGHT! Brett is a strong advocate of lightly tapping stuck fasteners with a hammer before trying to loosen them and I must say I haven't seen it fail on him yet. Still, it's funny to listen to him defend the practice, "It's not dodgy! Honest!"
As we stripped the master cylinder down, we found that it was full of this dark gray sludgy stuff. Possibly some effort to stop the leak by the dealer? Who knows, but it had to be cleaned. So we broke out the methylated spirits bathed the parts in the fluid while brushing with an artists paint brush. Once clean the parts were are dried with some low pressure compressed air.
Reassembly was easy enough, a little rubber grease around the seals made sure they weren't torn when pushed back into the cylinder. The unit was re-installed with the flare nut being carefully tightened again with the spanner-and-clamp routine used to prevent rounding off. The reservoir was filled with some fresh fluid and we undid the nipple on the slave cylinder. As it turned out, the clutch system took quite a bit of fluid to get it back into operation. There are two bleeding nipples, one on the slave cylinder and another on what seems to be a manifold attached to the inside of the chassis rail on the right hand side. I recommend bleeding the nipple on the chassis rail first, followed by the slave cylinder. Be prepared to go back and bleed the chassis rail manifold again though, as more air can get trapped in there. Remember to continually top up the fluid in the reservoir, as letting the level drop too low will just allow more air into the system, resulting in more fluid being wasted to get it out, not to mention the patience and leg muscles of the person doing the pedal pushing.
An easy way to tell if the system is bled properly is to leave the pedal alone for several minutes, then pump it several times in succession. The feel of the pedal shouldn't change over the course of the pedal operations. If it does, there's a good chance you've still got air in the line. After about two hours in total we had fixed the leak in the clutch master cylinder and Brett noticed the clutch felt a lot more positive in its action now. At the conclusion of this we sat back and recollected how this should have been the state the car was in when he bought it from the dealer. This sentiment gave way to excitement though as the car was now in a state where it would accept the future mods we had planned for it from the start (and was probably worth more than when he bought it several weeks ago as supplies of low volume imports start to dry up).
So where to from here? You'll just have to stay tuned to see...