[Jelly]

Hello all! New member here. My girlfriend has had her MKIV 1.8T Jetta for about 2 years now and she loves it... when it's not being a pain in our asses. Our latest endeavor with her baby has now somehow left me with a clutch engagement problem. About 4 or 5 months ago my buddy (who is a technician), and myself did a stage 1 clutch replacement, along with a new fork, throw out bearing, and single mass flywheel conversion. Everything went smooth except I managed to break the speed sensor. My bad... Anyways I just now got around to fixing it and was successful... sort of. When I finished I went to remove the car from the garage and test it out, but I noticed the clutch was only moving 3-4 inches at the most. I picked the pedal up with my toe and then it felt better, but now my clutch will only engage at the tippy top of the pedal. I took it for a test run to see if it was good, aaand it started slipping. Tried bleeding and I also pulled off the slave and it looked fine. I'm not completely sure how to tell if the slave cylinder is bad, but if I am retaining pedal pressure and there are no tears in the boot or leaks, I'm assuming it's okay.


I have no idea what I did to cause this problem and the same friend who helped me with the replacement is stumped too. Is there anyone who has had a similar problem and could maybe give a fix suggestion? Not trying to land in the dog house tonight! Thanks guys!

 

[KiDGiB]

I had a similar issue with my Saab. What i did was hook up a long clear hose to the bleeder valve and filled it with fluid. I used an air compressor to push the fluid into the line and closed the bleeder valve. Its basically pressure bleeding the clutch.

How are you guys bleeding the clutch?

 

[Jelly]

Well we did the pump and hold method like you would with brakes. Didn't see much a spray coming out of the bleeder, it was just a smooth stream. We did it probably 6-8 times to be sure. It felt a tad better after, but still wound up slipping in second.

 

[KiDGiB]

You probably still have air in the lines. I would try and borrow a pressure bleeder and see if that gets the air out.

 

[Jelly]

Okay I'll see if i can track one down. Thanks for the tip. I just don't get how it all the sudden started acting up. Do you think moving the clutch line around to access the speedo would have brought about a bubble lodged somewhere?

 

[Jelly]

*Update*

Clutch finally engaging after a decent drive and a ton clutch pumping. Although, now the clutch engagement has moved to the bottom of the pedal and its not the smoothest action in the world. I'm sure it's fine, but it still doesn't feel the same as it did before all of this. Thanks for the help again and feel free to toss more insight in if anyone might know what could've happened.