Hello to all as I am new to the board! I have a 2000 Outback Wagon. 100k miles (alot of trips to the mountains to fish!) The clutch was slipping when I accelerated into higher gears. Shift, floor the pedal and the engine would race.

 

Went and got the clutch replaced. Post repairs I am having a new

problem. The clutch pedal now sticks to the floor when in bumper-to-bumper Wash DC traffic and also becomes "spongy" with frequent use. The auto repair mechanic orginally thought might be air in the hydraulics. After taking the car back to him twice to bleed the hydraulics, still have the problem. Essentially... the more I use the clutch, the softer the pedal becomes. Mechanic said could be pressure problem with Master Cylinder.

 

This was not a problem before... now it is. Any thoughts? Is the

mechanic correct or did he not install correctly? I didn't have any issue with the clutch pedal and/or hydraulic pressure before the repairs. Am I looking at more $$$ with a Master Cylinder fix?

 

Any comments would be great. Thanks for listening!

Frankly hydraulic clutchs have suffered from wearing out at about the same time as the pressure plate and disc since they were introduced.

There was a factory service bulletin on these asking for replacement of the hose and slave (at least on my 99 Forester). So I changed both after bleeding failed. It still was not correct and I felt I did not have enough flow from the master.I changed that and it seems like it will do another five years.

When you change the clutch you put more load on the worn hydraulics so it is not unusal for them to die.By the way my failure was right after changing the clutch.

I changed dozens of clutch hydraulics on Ford C series trucks when I was a mechanic. It was one of the most common failures, but here in SF all clutch componants get a beating on the hills.

I had the same problem on my 98. Replaced the slave cylinder, then the master cylinder (under warranty), SOA finally said that pressure-bleeding of the system was the problem - it trapped air in a pocket in the master cylinder. Their solution was to "gravity-bleed" the system. I think they just cracked a fitting and let any air bubble out naturally. It seemed to work.