I have an 88 F150 5.0 5spd that I just got and the clutch was acting kind of strange sometimes was real hard to push so I decided I would bleed it in case it had an air bubble in it. Well started in and found the fluid was black as your hat and decided a flush was in order. opened the bleeder and a little fluid came out then stopped so I figured the master cylinder was empty so crawled back out looked at the cylinder and it was still full. I hit the pedal a couple times and it spit a little fluid at first then nothing. Looked at the master cylinder and it is still full so now I am figuring something is cloged somewhere and pull the quick disconnect at the slave and nothing so out comes the master cylinder and suck the fluid out start wiping it out and notice there is no hole for the fluid to go thru so now I am perplexed just happened to notice a ridge on the rubber liner and pulled on it ok now I get it the previous owner had filled the rubber diaphram with fluid and now i am 4 hours into a 20 minute job so I put it all back together and bled it out and it works great just thought some of you old timers would get a kick out of this and some of the newer guys just might learn something.

Steve

 

Thanks for posting. I want to learn, but damn.... I don't quite follow. Can you put some "." and "," there

Later,

 

Sorry I can be long winded. The bottom line of the whole story is there is a rubber bladder in the ford clutch master cylinders and it sits above the fluid. If you open up your master cylinder and look in you will see no fluid just a black rubber bladder you have to pull that out to see the fluid. The guy I got mine from had filled that rubber bladder (looks more like a rubber cap than anything) with fluid thinking he was topping off the master cylinder and since I did not know he had done that I got side tracked for about 4 hours figuring it out. That was the point of the story sorry for the confusion.

Steve

 

Thanks the clarification. I almost did that just like your previous owner.

 

No problem I am sure alot have actually done it that is why I wanted to get this out there.

Steve