clutch prob

[joe3180]

my problem is this....in the morning i start my car just fine drive on to work. when i get to work i park and put the clutch in neutral. once i put it in neutral i wont be able to shift again for awhile....poss until it cools down? well...8 hours later i get off work and start home. i get in some traffic and everything is fine for awhile and then ill stop for a min and wont be able to shift. i get it to start working as quick as i can and keep going. i get home and stop...then again....cant shift.

now...what problem would let me drive normal when the car is cold and when it gets hot not work correctly? pedal has good pressure and shifts great when it does work. clutch is strong and works great. only thing i did before this problem was change the clutch, pressure plate, flywheel, throwout bearing, pilot bearing, transmission fluid, shifter bushing (little plastic piece on the end of shifter)...thats all that comes to mind that has anything to do with the transmission.

please ask me anything to help me out....thank you

[liquid_cool]

well here is a shot in the dark...but it may actually be your issue..if not..then read the second paragraph.

im asuming your boosted and have a top mount turbo manifold that sits close to the brake/clutch lines and your master cylinder...if this is the case..when your manifold reaches temp..you may be boiling the fluids in your lines..cousing your loss in shiftability..this is possible if running DOT3 fluids and not wraping those lines as the lines sit less than 1 inch away..

there are solutions for this...heat wrap and or dot5.1,4.0 fluids that are made for race aplications and higher temps before reaching there boiling points..

if this is not your issue....then i would sugest dropping the transmission and back tracing your clutch job to see if sumpin went amiss.

good luck..keep us posted.

[tyrodtom]

If you've got old fluid it will have taken on moisture, and that will ,make the boiling point of the fluid even lower than new fluid. I circle track race a 240 a ( no turbo ) and had similiar problems, changing fluid helped, moving up to DOT 4 or 5 helped, and wrapping the clutch fluid line across the firewall helped too. I had to do all 3 to get the problem to go away completely.

[joe3180]

i thought about it but didnt think it would be that bad but i will do that this weekend and see if it works. ill wrap all the lines and change the fluid to some good fluid and hopefully it takes my problem away and ill be sure to post what happens....thank you.

any wrap you can suggest? i have the wrap left over from my manifold that i didnt use....should i use that or is there something better?

[joe3180]

i replaced the fluid with no improvement but now i think i know what is wrong. i was playing with the clutch when it wouldnt shift and it seems that when the car gets hot that if i push the pedal all the way down the clutch will engage but if i lift the pedal say 15-25mm i can shift. so now the question is will adjusting the pedal fix the problem or is there something else id need to do? ill play around with it a bit later but i cant test it till i drive it to work again so i thought i would ask in the mean time. thanks.