My hydraulic clutch system in my 95 F-150 has been giving me some fits lately. About a month ago I noticed it getting very hard to shift and my clutch pedal was pretty "spongy". Fluid wasn't really down, slave cylinder was dry, but in the cab at the clutch switch I had a trace of brake fluid.

New clutch master cylinder (from Ford), bled the system, worked great! About a week later, my hard shifting returned. I figured I had a trapped air bubble and bled again. Worked great again for about a week. I bled it again tonight to keep me going until I figure out what's going on.

No loss of fluid at all, and the slave is bone dry. From my past experience these Ford internal slaves are unually the easiest and most trouble free as far as bleeding them. Has anybody had this happen before? I have a new Ford slave for it as I thought that was my original problem, and I'm to the point of putting it in just to eliminate that possibility.

 

Update on my problem in case anyone else has similar issues:

I was down to about two days max before having to re-bleed. So Wednesday night I put in my new slave cylinder. Other than the initial bleed I haven't touched it since and it still shifts better than it has in years! Before it really started acting up I thought I had a couple worn synchros and now I think it was all just the old slave cylinder. This is the first one I've seen go bad without leaking.

 

i always do the slave cyl, line, and master at one time.