rainman

So I'm sitting at a light, start to take off and all of a sudden my clutch is about 5 inches shorter. It only comes off the floor about 2-3 inches, and gradually gets tougher to my car into gear. It got worse and worse until I started it up in my driveway and the clutch would barely come off of the floor, my car wouldn't go into gear at all. So I'm about to just turn it off and leave it, when I just try pulling it off the floor, and sure enough it worked, just like new. What the hell happened?

1999Daytona500PaceCar

iTrader: (2)

Look at the threads here in the manual tranny section - "Clutch and Clutch Fluid" and "Is my throwout bearing gone" (or something close to that) as I have my story in there which is close to your story and it turns out my fluid was shot. It was really nasty. I have flushed out the oil fluid with new and used the MityVac to bleed it and will try driving it in the morning and see if it is all better or if there is more to be done.

Transam64

Daytona..there's more to do.....wait till the weather in your area gets cooler.
Rainman.. Like he said ....use the search, because there are plenty of stories just like yours floating around this place.

Mike44138

iTrader: (3)

First check the clutch fluid level and clean/flush the system. Bleed it and watch the level for a few days. If it changes you've got a leak in the system somewhere.

If it's leaking, it's probably a bad slave or master cylinders. You can check the system integrity by removing the hydraulic line from the slave. When properly bled, the master will be impossible to depress when disconnected from the slave. If you see any fluid dripping from the bellhousing it's probably a leaking/broken slave (do not confuse this with fluid that can drip from the bellhousing when bleeding).

Either way if you have to bleed the clutch this is not normal maintenance. It indicates that there is a leak/bad seal in the sytem somewhere and unless you correct the problem you'll be stuck in bleeding hell until you do.