This site has a ton of good information and reminders however I just wanted to stress once again the importance of clutch fluid changes and making sure your clutch fork is properly greased. I meticulously maintain my car with all fluids however I have never changed clutch fluid on any of my cars and was not even aware it was required. After watching the very informative below and then changing my own fluid, I now know that it’s important.

My clutch pedal had the dreaded sticking/creaking feeling when at the floor that I believe was the clutch fork requiring grease and I also experienced some gears going in a little rougher than I liked with notchiness (especially on quicker shifts). After changing the fluid I immediately noticed a huge difference in smoothness of the clutch pedal and my gears now drop in like butter. My research has concluded that the old black clutch fluid was full of moisture and clutch dust causing the hydraulics to not engage quick enough or even possibly fully. Just for some background information my car is 2002 with 50,000miles fairly rough miles on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBbsy0LjUvE


You have a few different ways to change this fluid as you can do it the way mentioned in the video or bleed the clutch fluid. I chose to follow one of xvipers old guides in which you first suck the reservoir dry and refill a few times and then bleed the clutch from the slave cylinder to get every last ounce of old stuff out. This is the guide I followed:

http://forums.s2kca.com/showthread.php?t=12154


My car is truly a joy to drive after this extremely easy fluid change and I just thought I would share my experience.

 

thanks for the tip/reminder. its the little things that add up to joy imo!

 

I change out the clutch fluid once per year along with the brake fluid. The suck and bleed method works nicely for both.

I disagree that the black in the clutch fluid is "clutch dust" if you mean from the clutch disc. My theory why the clutch fluid looks so bad is that it gets worked a lot more than the brake fluid. This would be in frequency and movement within. The brakes pretty much grab when you put your foot on the pedal without much movement. The clutch fluid moves through the master/tube/slave a significant amount as you push your foot all the way to the floor. And of course shifting occurs a lot more than applying the brakes. I have no idea what the phenomenon (physics/chemistry) is as to why it turns black.

If you watch the color of the clutch fluid after a change it turns black very quickly. I used to change it more frequently, but it made no difference operationally.

Doing the clutch fork grease is not to hard. Getting grease on the shaft spines where the clutch disc moves back and forth is way harder. I have had some success using a bent coat hanger between the spring fingers.

My first MY00 was at 115k with no clutch issues by the time it was sold. My current MY03 is at 50k with no clutch issues.

 

Random1 Posted on May 13 2010, 02:33 PM
With the gearbox installed?

 

I am not sure why the fluid turns black exactly...I am passing on information from members of the corvette owners club that actually had their fluid sent away to a lab for testing resulting in clutch dust found in the fluid. In the video it explains why and how this is however I personally only know that the fluid change made a big difference for me!

 

Fluid never comes into contact with the clutch. I don't see how clutch dust could go in the fluid.

 

Black clutch fluid is definitely NOT black from clutch disc dust.

On topic, keeping it clean is very important. It will get dirtier faster than any other fluid in the car, due to frequency of use and distance of travel.

It is the best thing to do to avoid 1-2 gear grinds.

 

The black seals in the clutch master and slave would be my guess as to the fluid colour change.

 

I just changed my clutch and brake fluid. I used a turkey baster from 99cent store, it worked but I think the syringe like in the video would work better. Anybody know a good place to get a syringe like that?

 

I do a full brake bleed once a yr ( speed bleeders) and turkey baster out the clutch & brake fluids at every OCI.Here again,fluids are cheap.All my cars like the Prestone Dot 4.

This guy (Ranger) offers good clutch care tips that can apply to all clutches.

http://www.rangeracceleration.com/Clutch_Care.html

\rlr
carolina