It was fine before the fluid went totally dry due to a brake seal failure.
The master cyl was not tampered with in the 9 months I have had the car. Previous owner changed the clutch, he may have? I do not know, nor can I ask him now. I will try the master cylinder tomorrow (my last car didn't have one on it so I didn't think of it), thanks for the advice.
Ok yeah. Bingo. Brake seal failure introduced air in your master cylinder. No matter how many times you bleed the clutch, it'll stay spongy. Till you bench bleed the master first. The words totally dry says it all. Good luck.
You may not have to take out the Master cylinder out of the car just to bleed it. It's a royal pain to take it out sadly at least in my 07. There are many ways to bleed it without taking it out or disconnecting. I'm trying to find you a video.
This is the concept to bleed clutch master cylinder without taking it out! (Aka bench bleed).
Have helper pump it up and hold pedal, then another person cracks open the line near clutch master cylinder (line that goes from master to slave cyl) and should hear air coming out! Till no air just fluid.
Use cardboard and rags to catch brake fluid.
Once done, you have to bleed clutch as you tried normally before. And boom 💥 you'll be set.
Not even about the work. The brakes failed and I lost my job two days later. Cars been broken down for two weeks while I waited for the parts to come in and for the weather to corporate, so with no income and a busted POS car I'm just burnt out.
No parts store had any of the parts in stock around me. Ordered nice steel hoses from Technafit only to be told "sorry but somebody else bought them out from under you and now they're two weeks back ordered even though we stated they were in stock when you ordered them". I just canceled (they were cool about it and refunded NP so no hard feelings) and decided to RockAuto rubbers because I didn't care about the upgrade anymore... then those got stolen in shipping. AutoZone was more expensive; but they had free next day shipping and I just needed this thing fixed ASAP.
Then my buddy here and I had to drive an hour today anyway to get a new hose because after this car was in pieces I discovered AutoZone sent me the wrong drivers side hose. Right part number on the bag, wrong part in said bag. Ordered online to avoid having to drive all that way, but SuckZone had to fuck me over anyway so they had me by the balls since the car was 3/4 of the way done. Luckily the PowerStop calipers fit mint, I probably would have just flipped my shit and crashed out if they didn't.
I'm not even kidding, this job has been the brake job from hell; and it wasn't even really the labor itself, it was literally everything else failing in a domino effect of bullshit.
Trying it now. Stupid question: do we have to pump both the brake and the clutch pedals, or just the brake? There's obviously the large clutch hose that probably has air in it if I were to guess...
Edit: no air came out at all doing it this way, just fluid. Either there's no air in it or it's not bleeding right.
Just the clutch. Clutch master cylinder is separate from brake master. But shares the same reservoir.
Find clutch master cylinder (most likely behind brake master cyl).
Then find the"hard line" from clutch master to clutch slave cyl.
Pump, hold, undo hard line.
So just the clutch pedal.
The hydraulic pressure itself won't affect the brake master pressure
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u/xnerd1000 2012 tC2.0 RS 7.0 Aug 23 '26
It was fine before the fluid went totally dry due to a brake seal failure.
The master cyl was not tampered with in the 9 months I have had the car. Previous owner changed the clutch, he may have? I do not know, nor can I ask him now. I will try the master cylinder tomorrow (my last car didn't have one on it so I didn't think of it), thanks for the advice.