clutch pedal problem, soft, comes up slow Options

[hurley97]

so I get my car back from the body shop and first thing I notice is the clutch pedal feels different. heres what happens...

so when I'm at a stop light I keep it in gear with my foot on the clutch. after a few seconds
- revs drop 200 or so rpm
- can't pull it out of gear
- let off the brake it moves forward like an auto
- when I give it gas and try to start normally the pedal stays on the floor and comes up really slowly

more specifics:
- does not happen when the clutch is in and its NOT in gear
- driving normally it feels fine, a little soft at the top sometimes but not all the time
- if I pump the clutch pedal it starts to feel normal again (not soft at the top)
- last two times I drove in reverse I couldn't get it out of reverse to go forward, had to turn the car off and start it again
- checked the fluid and it looks fine, no bubbles or anything abnormal

only thing I could think of was that its needs to be bled but it still seems a little weird. how does air get into the fluid lines without touching them (I assume the body shop didn't touch them since they were just supposed to paint the car). if bleeding doesn't do the trick what else should I check? what else could it be?

[bindertch]

It sounds like the seals in your master cylinder have gone. If your resevoir isn't losing fluid and you can't find any leaks then it is the o-ring inside the master cylinder. You should be ablde to get a rebuild kit from a parts store for like $30. It will have a new master cylinder plunger and a few o-rings. If it was the slave cylinder you would see a fluid leak and there would be a steady loss of fluid from the resevoir. This happened to me on an 84 S10 and I had the entire clutch system replaced because it needed it any way.

[97lestyousay]

It sounds like the seals in your master cylinder have gone. If your resevoir isn't losing fluid and you can't find any leaks then it is the o-ring inside the master cylinder. You should be ablde to get a rebuild kit from a parts store for like $30. It will have a new master cylinder plunger and a few o-rings. If it was the slave cylinder you would see a fluid leak and there would be a steady loss of fluid from the resevoir. This happened to me on an 84 S10 and I had the entire clutch system replaced because it needed it any way.

I would agree with this, you should see a leak at the slave cylinder if that was the
problem it can't leak internaly from the slave side it just leaks out of the seal on the end.
I replaced both on my truck and it wasn't much more for a rebuilt master
cylinder than the rebuild kit so you might check that.