5 replies to this topic

[Dietmar]

1993 volvo 850, 165k miles, 5-speed manual transmission.

This is an issue that has been around with this car for at least as long as I own it: 6 years, 20k miles (yeah, I don't need to drive much).

Had the transmission replaced 4 years ago, and the clutch 2 years ago. The latter triggered by this clutch behavior, but didn't fix it: Mostly when other people (wife, father-in-law, au pair, sister-in-law) drove the car, you would have to floor the clutch pedal to disengange the clutch. They never were able to explain what they did, but they had to be doing something different as with a few miles of driving I was always able to get the clutch to disengage at the proper half-way or so point. Along with the low engage/disengage point came the issue that the clutch pedal would get stuck about half-way on it's way up, as if it were not properly lubricated. I always pull up the pedal when I notice that - this might be all the difference with the other drivers are not doing the toe-pull-up. I found those two springs on the clutch pedal, and they look hooked in fine.

Now the issue is getting a little more annoying as the clutch misbehavior shows up even with me driving the car exclusively. I can still shift fine, but sometimes I get surprised by the low-disengange and I grind a gear. I am also worried that one day the clutch will fail on me and then I am in trouble.

When the mechanic replaced the clutch two years ago I don't think we replaced master or slave cylinder, but he had bled the clutch (not sure where and how), but it didn't help the issue. (My guess is that the clutch actually might have been just fine with 80k or so miles on it and that effort was a total waste.)

I think I am going to try a new mechanic, but if it's clear-cut I might as well bring along the parts I need. Please advise - thank you!

[2404life]

My opinion is that the slave cylinder just needs bled. I would check to make sure it isn't leaking and then bleed it out. In the course of doing a few 5-speed swaps, bleeding the clutch is always a pain. I can tell you that the pedal will get stuck on the floor if the slave isn't thouroughly bled. Good luck!

[Dietmar]

Thank you for the reply and sorry for the delay getting back to this. I read somewhere that the clutch is self-bleeding and I am wondering wether that is what I am experiencing: When that clutch behavior shows up, I learned to kick the clutch very fast all the way down a few times until I don't feel any of that weird resistance which could be bubbles of air moving through a small orifice. Once the clutch moves "clean", everything is well until a 30 min or hours later. Is that always the same air (and bleeding should take care of it, though it didn't help two years ago when I last looked into it) or should I better replace the slave cylinder as this means it is sucking in fresh air from somewhere?

[Dietmar]

Okay, here's a little update. I got a replacement slave and put it in with a mechanic. Bleeding appeared difficult, but in the end it worked. They told me I should come back after a while to bleed again, and sure enough, there was some residual weirdness, every so often. However, mostly I thought this issue was fixed for good. So, this morning I went in for a final bleeding. All looked good, but then the mechanic tested and there was no clutch action at all. So he got someone else to help and they tried to bleed it. And then they noticed that break fluid was coming out of the piston side of the (new) slave. So I went back home to pick up the old one for them to install. They did, and again they had a hard time with the bleeding, but finally, late this afternoon, I got the car back and the clutch is working fine. We'll see after 100 miles or so whether anything got fixed or whether it is just the same as before. Either way, the mechanic boss doesn't think it's the slave anymore and doesn't think it's air in there - it should then be a constant trouble, not something that happens every now and then. He expects me back, but doesn't know yet what the issue might be. Told me to keep an eye on the break fluid reservoir, but I don't think that ever went low.

[Dietmar]

Drove maybe 40 miles today, a lot of city driving through Manhattan, so pretty much clutch action non-stop. Unfortunately, clutch was not behaving too well. When parking on the way from the garage yesterday, everything was good. Then, this morning, not anymore, right from the start. Again, free moving clutch for the first 30-60% of the way, with barely any resistance, and then I felt normal resistance with the clutch disengaging before flooring the pedal. Sometimes, the pedal came back up all the way by itself, sometimes it did not and mostly pulled it up with the foot. Again, fast depressing of the pedal gave me the impression that i am moving bubbles through a small orifice, but of course it could have been something different altogether.

To clarify: this is with the old slave cylinder, and I would say behavior is now worse than previously with this cylinder as I am now unable to get the clutch to work well with a few fast kicks on it, and it is certainly worse than with the (now broken) new slave cylinder. Fluid reservoir remains full to the brim, so I don't see any external leaks. Just learned elsewhere that I can see internal leaks of the master cylinder if the fluid in the reservoir rises when depressing the pedal (coinciding with the little resistance). I will try that tomorrow.

[Dietmar]

all is well now. Seems to have been the master cylinder all along. It took much longer than expected to repair because I wasn't aware that Volvo had changed the specs of the clutch line connection to the master cylinder: instead of the old screw-on connection it is a plug-in one. When the mechanic installed the master cylinder he was quite surprised to see it didn't match. It took me some time to find out what was going on and then another waiting for the new clutch line (another $60...). However, I now have a new (and also non-leaking) slave cylinder and a new clutch line, so my conclusion to blame the master cylinder (which seems to operate ok in my hands) might still be wrong. Thanks to all who contributed and good luck to all facing similar problems and are reading this!