The clutch – endgame

I finally found the spot where the clutch line was leaking. It was in the middle of  the braided line, which must have bent and cracked at some point. This revelation took away my motivation to do anything at all.

This morning the motivation came back. I think it was under the dishes or something… I started to wonder if I could do the clutch line using shorter copper-nickel pipes and some adapters.

I already had a short steel braided line for the original Toyota manufactured clutch line, but hadn’t use it because I decided to build a custom full length steel braided line.

Adapters I found from my local hardware store, readily available. This time I bought adapters for the 4,75mm CuNi tube, because the 6mm tube was sold out. This turned out to be a winning choice.

I bought five M12x1 to M12x1 adapters, a bunch of M12x1x5mm and some M10x1x5mm fittings just to be sure and 5m of tubing.

I had drawn a worst case scenario plan for the line, which split the clutch line into seven segments. I already had two of the segments made, so there was need to do at least five more. Some planning with the segment lengths and the adapters were in more accessible locations and therefore easier to tighten. Another small thing I had forgotten last time. 🙂

Finally, I only needed three segments. The 4,75mm tube actually worked really well with my tube tools and I made all the tube ends in just minutes, compared to the 6mm tube which never worked well with my shitty tools.

One thing which managed to slow down the progress was a small bit of something in one of the adapters. I think I forgot to clean them properly before I installation and I had to tear down a part of the line and splash the brake fluid everywhere.

For the first time, the bleeding went really quickly. One reason of course was the smaller diameter tubing and another reason was the leaking (which didn’t occur this time) 🙂 Maladar was really tired but helped me with the bleeding as much as he could. I tightened the bleeder and asked Maladar to press the pedal while I was under the car so I could watch the release cylinder. The cylinder moved about 2cm when Maladar pressed the pedal. According to Maladar the pedal felt like it should be.

At this point, Maladar felt that he should already be sleeping and left. I attached the battery and checked that everything was ok and started. I used e-brake to create some resistance and tested that the clutch was working perfectly. Then I celebrated with picking trashes and washing a part of the floor 🙂

I’ll try to draw some schematics about the clutch line, both worst case scenario and how it turned out. I don’t think there is any use for the schematics in real world, but just for fun 🙂