WOT Shifting issues, clutch engage on floor *SOLVED*
02-03-2009, 11:55 AM
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WOT Shifting issues, clutch engage on floor *SOLVED* Let me go ahead and put this out there. Up until today, I have hated and despised hydraulic clutch systems, specifically GM designs since I first got my Camaro in 2003. This car has been through 2 motors, 2 rear ends, and 2 transmissions... and throughout all the changes one thing had stayed constant... the clutch NEVER felt right. I've had a spec 3, spec 5, "Rhino Brand" hydraulics, GM Ls6 hydraulics x2 and none of the combinations never were perfect. Some were too soft, some engaged right on the floor, some wouldn't even disengage the clutch at all.
After my car was wrecked 2 years ago, and I finally got around to having it painted and finishing up the build on it this year.... I have been fighting a falling clutch pedal ever since. It used to engage near the floor.... until recently it started engaging ON the floor. If you even came off the floor a centimeter you could feel the car start to move forward. Well this equates to not even being able to shift moderately fast... let alone at WOT / powershifting like I am used to doing in any other brand 5 or 6 speed vehicle I get in.
Thankfully... due in part to LS1tech that was solved yesterday and today. I had been reading great things lately about the Tick Performance master cylinder. Great I thought.. .a solution to my problems..... but wait.. its $300 bucks.
Nothing against tick, I am sure it's worth the money to anyone that buys it and I am sure it's a great piece... the problem is $300 bucks could be better spent on something else on the car... or in this economy something else all together.
There had to be another solution I thought.... I can't just be stuck with this unless I want to spend $300 bucks. And then someone reminded me that you can make your stock master cylinder adjustable. Thanks to the sticky I found here I found the instructions I needed and went to work. Simple enough process cutting the bump stop and putting the coupling nut on the rod. After reinstall late last night I adjusted it to its highest position and waited until today to take the car out.
Oh my god, what a difference. The clutch feels EXACTLY like I always imagined it should. It engages about an inch off the top of the pedal, and actually even has a slightly stronger pedal feel which I can only attribute to the fact that somehow after doing the mod it has more room in the MC for fluid. I brought the car up to temperature and went to work on it. First to second smooth as butter even at 6600 rpm and WOT. Second to third same deal, 3rd to fourth exact same. No sign of a mushy pedal, no sign of the engagement point changing. So I turned around and did it again. Same thing, perfect feel.
Sorry for the long story.. I just wanted to share the hassles and my solution to whats been killing me forever on this car. If anyone hasn't done it I would recommend at least giving it a try before going out and spending a good bit of change on a piece that is probably worth it, but you might have exactly what you need already in the car. It might just need a bit of adjusting. Oh, and it's been said 100 times before, but get a miti vac to bleed the system. Even with a dry MC it took all of 10 minutes for me to bleed it.
After my car was wrecked 2 years ago, and I finally got around to having it painted and finishing up the build on it this year.... I have been fighting a falling clutch pedal ever since. It used to engage near the floor.... until recently it started engaging ON the floor. If you even came off the floor a centimeter you could feel the car start to move forward. Well this equates to not even being able to shift moderately fast... let alone at WOT / powershifting like I am used to doing in any other brand 5 or 6 speed vehicle I get in.
Thankfully... due in part to LS1tech that was solved yesterday and today. I had been reading great things lately about the Tick Performance master cylinder. Great I thought.. .a solution to my problems..... but wait.. its $300 bucks.
Nothing against tick, I am sure it's worth the money to anyone that buys it and I am sure it's a great piece... the problem is $300 bucks could be better spent on something else on the car... or in this economy something else all together.
There had to be another solution I thought.... I can't just be stuck with this unless I want to spend $300 bucks. And then someone reminded me that you can make your stock master cylinder adjustable. Thanks to the sticky I found here I found the instructions I needed and went to work. Simple enough process cutting the bump stop and putting the coupling nut on the rod. After reinstall late last night I adjusted it to its highest position and waited until today to take the car out.
Oh my god, what a difference. The clutch feels EXACTLY like I always imagined it should. It engages about an inch off the top of the pedal, and actually even has a slightly stronger pedal feel which I can only attribute to the fact that somehow after doing the mod it has more room in the MC for fluid. I brought the car up to temperature and went to work on it. First to second smooth as butter even at 6600 rpm and WOT. Second to third same deal, 3rd to fourth exact same. No sign of a mushy pedal, no sign of the engagement point changing. So I turned around and did it again. Same thing, perfect feel.
Sorry for the long story.. I just wanted to share the hassles and my solution to whats been killing me forever on this car. If anyone hasn't done it I would recommend at least giving it a try before going out and spending a good bit of change on a piece that is probably worth it, but you might have exactly what you need already in the car. It might just need a bit of adjusting. Oh, and it's been said 100 times before, but get a miti vac to bleed the system. Even with a dry MC it took all of 10 minutes for me to bleed it.
02-03-2009, 12:46 PM
#2
Long but good post. I've always had a Mcleod adjustable in my car and it has worked fine. It started leaking a month or two ago. I didn't have the money to buy a 300 dollar fix either so I went back with a stock mc. Now the clutch engages way too low for my taste but it works fine. BTW, I have the drill mod already done and with my Mcleod working good, I never had any issues with shifting over 5K. I'm going to send it back to Mcleod and get it rebuilt for 75 bucks shipped.
02-03-2009, 01:48 PM
#3
If you think the car shifts good with the stock cylinder made adjustable, you ought to drive one with our kit installed.
The stock cylinder can be made "adjustable", but there is no way to successfully make it flow more fluid than it is designed to because of it's internal stop. With our kit, you can successfully flow the amount of fluid needed to make the clutch 100% fully disengage. Check out this link for more information from a guy who has been through a ton of different Master Cylinders:
https://ls1tech.com/forums/manual-tr...ess-story.html
I'm glad the car is shifting better for you though, ineedashortblock! If you run into any fluid heating issues or further disengagement issues, consider our kit. It's $300+ pricetag is tough to swallow initially, but the residual money it will save you over time in not having to buy clutches constantly and/or have your T56 rebuilt will make the cost easier to justify.
The stock cylinder can be made "adjustable", but there is no way to successfully make it flow more fluid than it is designed to because of it's internal stop. With our kit, you can successfully flow the amount of fluid needed to make the clutch 100% fully disengage. Check out this link for more information from a guy who has been through a ton of different Master Cylinders:
https://ls1tech.com/forums/manual-tr...ess-story.html
I'm glad the car is shifting better for you though, ineedashortblock! If you run into any fluid heating issues or further disengagement issues, consider our kit. It's $300+ pricetag is tough to swallow initially, but the residual money it will save you over time in not having to buy clutches constantly and/or have your T56 rebuilt will make the cost easier to justify.
02-03-2009, 02:40 PM
#4
Just be careful you aren't actually pre-loading the pressure plate with the adjustment at the master. The pedal will only come up so high, after that adjusting the rod longer begins to actually apply pressure to the pp. If that happens, you'll probably have a slipping clutch pretty soon. The pedal has an upper and lower limit, so theres really no way to gain stroke, and the bore size hasn't been changed either when modifying the stocker.
As long as you're still going down to the pedals stop and switch you should be fine, but if you've adjusted the rod to the point that the cylinder has bottomed internally when fully pressed down you're doing no good by adjusting it more with a modified stocker...
Really all you can gain by making a stock master adjustable is adjusting the slack at the top of the pedal out. There may be a 1/2 inch of play at the top of the pedal, but converted to the travel of the actual piston in the master theres very little to be gained. Cleaning the gunk out of the old cylinder and adding some fresh fluid probably helped it more than anything.
As long as you're still going down to the pedals stop and switch you should be fine, but if you've adjusted the rod to the point that the cylinder has bottomed internally when fully pressed down you're doing no good by adjusting it more with a modified stocker...
Really all you can gain by making a stock master adjustable is adjusting the slack at the top of the pedal out. There may be a 1/2 inch of play at the top of the pedal, but converted to the travel of the actual piston in the master theres very little to be gained. Cleaning the gunk out of the old cylinder and adding some fresh fluid probably helped it more than anything.
02-24-2010, 12:07 AM
#5
I know this is an old post but I have made one further adjustment to my stock master cylinder to allow it to push more fluid. I disassembled my stock master cylinder and ground down a 3/8 - 7/16" of the internal bump stop to actually allow the cylinder to move further into the cylinder effectively moving more fluid! I had alway's had the same issues with the clutch engaging almost off the floor and like others can't afford the extra 300 for the nice Tick so I did the adjustable rod and internal stop mod and this has fixed my issue thus far! Now I can shift my TA like it's a Honda Civic LOL
08-25-2010, 02:36 PM
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https://ls1tech.com/forums/manual-tr...r-writeup.html
Yes, I did this to my car also. It worked great for a short time but my high rpm shifting problem is still there. I would like to buy the tick mc as soon as I can spare the 300+ bucks. I think the main reason this worked for a little bit is that you clean all the old dirty fluid out of the mc. It doesn't take long for the fluid to get dirty again and the ranger fluid change method takes forever to do and I don't think you get all the dirty fluid out.
Tick will get my business as soon as the funds become available.
Yes, I did this to my car also. It worked great for a short time but my high rpm shifting problem is still there. I would like to buy the tick mc as soon as I can spare the 300+ bucks. I think the main reason this worked for a little bit is that you clean all the old dirty fluid out of the mc. It doesn't take long for the fluid to get dirty again and the ranger fluid change method takes forever to do and I don't think you get all the dirty fluid out.
Tick will get my business as soon as the funds become available.
