Take me to school... slave cylinder?
 

Friends!

I believe my slave cylinder is going bad. I had something similar happen in an 1989 Jeep Comanche and that’s what’s it was.

The clutch is difficult to disengage, which in turn, means it is hard to get into gear.

The pedal is soft and catches at the very end, near the floor.

Could this be the slave cylinder?
How does someone replace that?
where is it?
could it be something else?

The clutch has never slipped or felt like it was slipping.


I have a 1990 F-150 with 4.9L and 5-speed.
Roughly 215k miles.

Your slave cylinder may be leaking. Have you checked the brake fluid level in the CLUTCH master cylinder? If the slave cylinder is leaking and just low on fluid you may be able to make it last a bit longer by adding fluid from time to time. The slave cylinder is inside the transmission clutch housing and you must pull the transmission to replace it.

If you haven't checked the fluid level in the clutch master cylinder, I would do that first thing. The clutch master cylinder is just inboard from the brakes master cylinder, I believe the lid screws off of it and there is a rubber boot under it that must be lifted out to check the fluid level.

One of the easy ways to test your diagnosis- does it shift easily with the engine off?

If it does, you're right- the clutch is dragging, for some reason.
I'd replace the master and bleed it first, simply because
that's so much easier than changing that concentric slave.

hth

t

when you say replace the master, what do you mean?

The brake master cylinder?

The clutch master cylinder, next door to the brake master cylinder as described by 88n94.

Ah yes. I was reading on my phone and missed that.

I'll check it tonight!

What a bummer that its internal so you have to drop the trans, that might be a deal breaker for me and this truck. :(

It was a little low!

Topped it off and its feeling better. The real test will be over the next few weeks.