greasemitts

Girlfriend's '99 Honda Accord - clutch started to fail (not enough travel on slave cylinder). No problem, changed the master and slave. Did a good bleed (using tubing into jar routine.) Worked fine - girlfriend impressed .

Then the problem came back . A bleed lasts 2 or 3 weeks then slave travel falls off and I have to bleed the clutch again. Done this three times, so looks like air is slowly getting sucked into the system somewhere. No visible fluid leaks anywhere.

Any suggestions on what to do next? Little rubber seals on the clutch line fittings? Clutch line itself? Tube to fluid reservoir?

Thanks for any help!

eg18a

pull the dust boot off behind the master, and check to see if it is wet there, i would also reccommend replacing the rubber hose on it, if it has one like my hatch does, sometimes these go bad and give you goofy problems without leaking or anything, b/c the insides of them will deteriorate. also try bleeding alot of fluid through it to try and clean it up a bit.

greasemitts

I wanted to post the fix for this problem in case someone else has a clutch system that needs to be bled every couple of weeks.

The problem was the small rubber seal between the hydraulic line and the master cylinder. When I replaced the master cylinder and removed the hydraulic line, the rubber seal stayed at the bottom of the bore in the master cylinder. When I reinstalled the line, I put a new rubber seal into the bottom of the bore -- just like I found it. That was incorrect.

The rubber seal (it looks like a small flat o-ring) should be placed all the way up onto the round shaft protruding from the end of the hydraulic line - do not put the seal into the mating bore in the master cylinder. It's the same story for the slave cylinder.

Looks like the problem was the seal was not in the correct place and the master cylinder would s-l-o-w-l-y suck in a tiny amount of air on each stroke. After 2-3 weeks, you have a full-blown air bubble in the line and the clutch stops working. It only leaked air on the return stroke -- apparently the seal held against pressure on the down stroke, so no fluid was leaking out.

Hope this helps someone else -- took me awhile to figure it out...