how to bleed clutch on a 2005 Mustang GT

[zanzabar]

I've seen two methods for getting air out of clutch lines and slave cylinder on newer model Mustangs. Apparently the problem is that the slave bleeder screw is buried inside the bell housing and inaccessible so these weird (to me at least) methods are necessary.

#1 http://www.allfordmustangs.com/forums/1002625-post86.html Pull a vacuum on the master cylinder and then release and pump the clutch pedal. Repeat a few times.

#2 Park the car pointing uphill and pump the pedal many times very slowly.

I don't have a rubber stopper handy and also no desire to go looking for one. So I think I'll give #2 a try. My question: why would I want to pump the pedal "very slowly"? I'm surmising that parking the nose uphill puts the slave cyl at the very bottom of the hydraulic line and the bubbles then will rise up into the master cylinder with the pumping action. But why would slow be better than fast or any other speed at which the clutch pedal is pumped?

 

[George7941]

Just a guess, fast pumping agitates the brake fluid so much that the air bubbles will break up into smaller ones which are less likely to float up than larger ones.

 

[zanzabar]

Interesting idea, seems plausible. What I ended up doing is both fast and slow, basically, intermittently while I was bleeding each of the brakes. So maybe if I agitated it too much I probably did nothing, I dunno. Clutch engagement point was very low previous to bleeding and it's a little bit better now so hopefully I did something!

 

[AdRock]

Get another cap for the master cylinder, they're $15 on rockauto. Drill a hole in it and use some good JB weld for plastic to mount and seal a regular plastic vacuum hose connector in it. Then whenever you want to bleed the clutch you just pop on the 2nd cap and connect the vacuum pump to it. We did it on a friends GT and it worked fine.

Also, this same cap can be used with a regulated air supply to force bleed the brakes.