First problem with the MR2

MeAnBoY

MeAnBoY

MeAnBoY

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
3,501
Location
Hampshire
Right so as expected from a 23year old car problems are part and parcel of ownership.
Anyway I parked the car in the garage like normal a couple of nights ago but when I jumped in the car today the first thing I noticed was an unusually slack clutch pedal. it now has zero resistance to it and just doesn't work. now I can engage the gears when the car is off but obviously when on there's boat I can do. Am I on the right lines in thinking its the clutch cable that's given up the ghost, or worse?
posting this from my phone so trying to to keep the post fairly short. any help or suggestions welcome!
 
in my experience a snapped cable will plunge the pedal to the floor... does the MR2 have a clutch cable or is it a hydraulic clutch?
 
The mk1 MR2 has a hydraulic clutch, and it sounds like your slave cylinder has gone (fairly common, master cylinder is more rare). It's not a hugely expensive fix, about £30 in parts iirc, bit fiddly to bleed they system but nothing hugely hard.

As a temporary fix though, try filling up the reservoir and pumping the pedal, you should be able to get enough pressure there to change gear and I found when mine went that that lasted a day give or take (I'd need to do the same thing every morning, till I fixed it of course...)
 
Get the bonnet up and have a look at the bulkhead on the drivers side. There ought to be a big piece of plastic trim which runs right across the car behind the spare wheel although it might be missing as people tend to take them out permanently. You should be able to see the brake fluid reservoir easily with the trim in place but the clutch fluid reservoir is hidden behind it (there's a small slot so you can see the fluid level but that's it.)

If the trim is still there take the spare wheel out and remove the trim so you can get to the fluid reservoir - it'll probably be empty. What happens is that over time the slave cylinder will gradually leak until there's no fluid left in the reservoir at which point the master cylinder will suck in a big slug of air and your pedal goes all soft. Ideally you need to replace the slave cylinder (the part is only about £25 from brakesint or buypartsby but it can be a bit of a git to replace) but as a temporary fix you can refill the reservoir with fluid, bleed through the slug of air and carry on as normal whilst keeping an eye on the fluid level and topping up before it gets empty.
 
I was going to post first and say the slave cylinder would be the first port of call but I know bugger all about MR2s so I held fire :) I'd be very surprised if it was anything else.
 
kaiowas said:
What happens is that over time the slave cylinder will gradually leak until there's no fluid left in the reservoir at which point the master cylinder will suck in a big slug of air and your pedal goes all soft. Ideally you need to replace the slave cylinder (the part is only about £25 from brakesint or buypartsby but it can be a bit of a git to replace) but as a temporary fix you can refill the reservoir with fluid, bleed through the slug of air and carry on as normal whilst keeping an eye on the fluid level and topping up before it gets empty.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what happened to my MX-5
 
Tesla said:
Care to share the fix?
Click to expand...

Was exactly as described by Kaiowas and others in this thread, leaky fluid from the clutch release mechanism which i topped up but still had no resistance in the clutch pedal, so that meant i had air bubbles in the system. All i needed to do after that was locate the bleeding nipple (oeerr) which is right by the gearbox and release the air, top-up the fluid again and off we go :)
 
MeAnBoY said:
Was exactly as described by Kaiowas and others in this thread, leaky fluid from the clutch release mechanism which i topped up but still had no resistance in the clutch pedal, so that meant i had air bubbles in the system. All i needed to do after that was locate the bleeding nipple (oeerr) which is right by the gearbox and release the air, top-up the fluid again and off we go :)
Click to expand...

That's only a temp fix. It will leak out again until you sort the underlying problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom