Intermittant Hydraulic Clutch Problem

Hi all - Happy Holidays to all. Having a problem with my 1996 Suzuki Sidekick hydraulic Clutch.  3 times now in the last 5 days, I have depressed the clutch to start the vehicle, but the car is in gear and lurches forward.  I then turn off the car, restart it, and it is fine.  Today was the worst, I was at a red light, and I couldnt get it into gear when the light turned green.  I had to start it in first gear, and limp to a parking lot.  Here I checked the fluid (full) and tried again.  It was fine.  Any Thoughts??

Dan Wright

|Hi all - Happy Holidays to all. |Having a problem with my 1996 Suzuki Sidekick hydraulic Clutch. 3 times now |in the last 5 days, I have depressed the clutch to start the vehicle, but |the car is in gear and lurches forward. I then turn off the car, restart |it, and it is fine. Today was the worst, I was at a red light, and I |couldnt get it into gear when the light turned green. I had to start it in |first gear, and limp to a parking lot. Here I checked the fluid (full) and |tried again. It was fine. Any Thoughts??

Sounds like your clutch master cylinder may be bypassing. Any sign of leakage anywhere? Bubbled paint on the firewall? crud accumulation around/below the slave cylinder? Does it help when you pump it? Rex in Fort Worth

In article , Dan WRight wrote:

Similar problem not too long ago on my (at the time) just a couple of days new-to-me Mazda 626 - Clutch basically just "went away" on me partway to work - it was fine at the Lincoln Avenue light, but four blocks later, approaching the 5th St. light, I tried to downshift from

3rd to 2nd. No go. Couldn't pull it out of third without some fairly serious muscle, and once I did get it out, coudlnt' get it into second. Coasted to s stop for the red, and couldn't get it to go into first until I killed the engine. Stepped on the clutch and it felt perfectly normal, started up, and took off just fine when the light went green. 3 blocks further, downshifted (or tried to...) from 2nd to 1st for the turn into the parking lot, and ended up coasting into my parking spot 'cause I couldn't get it into 1st gear. Once I had it piled in the parking space, I started looking to see what was wrong, and could find nothing. Fluid topped up, visible motion (seemed a little less than it shoudl be, though) at the clutch fork when watching as I had somebody mash the clutch pedal for me, the whole nine yards. It LOOKED fine by everything I could see at the time. Canceled out of work for the night and dragged the beast home (Thank you again, Triple-A Plus card! Don't leave home without it!!! After being saved by it so many times, you can bet I'll *NEVER* go anywhere without one!) By then, of course, it was too dark to try to accomplish anything, so waited for morning. I was all set to pull the master and slave cylinders (both rebuilt just weeks before the wreck) out of the wrecked car, and just do a straight-up swap to see if I had hydraulic problems that I couldn't see, when I pulled the reservoir off the (mostly) running car so I could get to the bolts and pull the master cylinder. Dumped it out, and in the bottom of the reservoir, right in the outlet, I found a small (tiny enough to be invisible when looking down at it through the just-barely discolored fluid) piece of plastic-backed tinfoil - EXACTLY like the stuff used as the inner seal of... wait for it - A brake fluid bottle...

Removing the little piece of foil/plastic, re-installing and refilling the reservoir, and bleeding the clutch system cured the problem.

What happened? Here's my interpretation: The piece of foil/plastic was laid over (and partially sucked through/pressed into) the hole that allows fluid to flow from reservoir to master cylinder and back. The position it was in let it act as a one-way (up, into the reservoir) valve, so releasing the clutch was pumping the fluid up into the reservoir, but mashing the clutch was trying to pump fluid out of the MC, which couldn't refill, because the foil "valve" was in the way. End result: Although I had a reservoir full of fluid, decent-seeming pedal feel, and movement at the slave cylinder, I didn't have anywhere near enough motion being transmitted to actually throw out the clutch.

I also came to the crystal clear realization of *EXACTLY* why my father, years upon years ago, it seems, had thrown such an incredible hissy fit the day I opened a bottle of brake fluid to top up the brakes on the old Caprice Estate by simply stabbing my finger through the seal on the bottle, rather than peeling it off... Dollars get you donuts that the previous owner of the vehicle (or someone who had serviced it) had done exactly that same move, and had a fragment of the seal break off to float in the fluid, which carried the piece along when he topped up the clutch, leaving it sitting in the reservoir, just waiting for the various currents that clutch use causes in the fluid to carry it to an opportune place to become a blockage. I *KNOW* it wasn't me, since I hadn't even opened the clutch reservoir to look inside, let alone poured anything into it, since buying the car less than a week before. (Why bother to open it when it's a semi-clear plastic tank that you can easily see has or doesn't have enough juice in it, right?)

Long tale, short fix (for me... might not apply to you)

Other possiblilies: Either (or both) cylinders may be "unhappy" somehow - worn/softened/broken O-rings and such) - Dunno about yours, but rebuilding the slave cylinder costs me $3.50 in parts and 20 minutes (including remove/replace) of time, while rebuilding the master costs $6.40, and takes a little less than 45 minutes. Add in the 15 minutes it takes to refill/bleed the system afterwards, and, at least for me, we're talking about 10 dollars, and an hour and a half max to cover every possible failure in the hydraulics.

If the clutch itself is toasted, though... Well, of course we're talking a whole different kettle of fish... But, after having done that job on this car (or its identical twin) 4 times now, that's not even a *BIG* problem.

And never *EVER* let someone tell you that it doesn't help a lot to have a wrecked vehicle that's *EXACTLY IDENTICAL* (well, except for the fact that the wrecked one doesn't have A/C or power steering, and it's a different color - in my case, there are less than a thousand numbers between the VIN numbers of the two cars, so I'd say it's close enough...) sitting on blocks waiting for you to take parts off of. :)