Clutch problems on 2003 Honda

[atikovi]

Just got this 2003 Insight with 225K.

1) If I press the pedal all the way down, it’s hard to put into first or reverse with the engine running and the car stopped. It’s actually harder than normal to put into any gear even when moving and going through the gears.

2) With the pedal all the way down, as soon as I lift off the slightest bit, the clutch engages so I have to rev it a little more than normal to get going.

At the top of the pedal position there is normal freeplay and the pedal is out as far as it can go. The master cylinder looks new and the slave looks good. The bleed screw loosened easy and I bled the system with no change. The clutch doesn’t slip. Any idea what is causing this?

 

[xgmad]

The clutch is sticking to the flywheel for some reason, you may need to remove the transmission and inspect the clutch installation. It seems that someone tried to fix this issue with a new master cylinder.

 

[CarDoc66]

The disk may not be sliding freely on the input shaft splines.

 

[Kurtatron]

You can easily eliminate the hydraulics as a culprit by having someone depress the pedal while you check the slave cylinder underneath. The rod should extend somewhere betweeen 3/4 to 1 inch.

 

[atikovi]

Hard to tell,

Pedal up,

Pedal depressed,

 

[fdcg27]

Only 225K and twenty years and there are clutch problems?
Who would've thunk it?
It seems as though you're going to have to get to the root of the problem and separate the transaxle from the engine to determine the cause and correct it. Does this have integrated motor assist? That would seem to add to the difficulty of what is a very straightforward job involving a lot of work. This probably also has a cradle for the drivetrain assembly, which will mean you'll need to find some way of supporting everything while removing the cradle and if your pictures are any guide (rust) getting the bolts securing it out might be quite the fight, especially since you'll want to avoid snapping any off.
Might as well order a new disc, pressure plate and throwout bearing from the get-go, and maybe a new flywheel as well, since if the original is still in there it almost certainly has micro cracking and cannot be resurfaced.
Someone may have simply replaced the disc at some point without addressing the pressure plate, throwout bearing and flywheel.
Why do I think all of this?
Past experience with high miles Hondas and their clutchs.

 

[andyd]

Up here, A new flywheel for the Rat was only 60$ from AUtozone, I couldn't find any shop that turned them . The flywheel was very blued anyway. My last clutch job prior to this was on Bugs in the 70s. I went in anticipating just putting in a rebuilt clutch like I did back in the day. Talk about mission creep. I changed every thing from the crank hub to the pedal arm. Iam quite pleased with the result of the job. I used a LUK rep-set and everything else came from AZ. Please post your fix

 

[JamesBond]

It seems from the picture that you are getting some travel from the clutch slave but maybe it’s not enough? I have an 05 civic that I got air in the system during a clutch bleed. The only way I was able to get pedal back was to use a handheld mityvac on the bleeder while someone else kept the reservoir topped up. I had to keep this up until the mityvac was full, no amount of regular or gravity bleeding would work. The bleeder is low on this setup so it takes vacuum or pressure to move the trapped air all the way down in one go.

 

[atikovi]

Problem was a cracked pressure plate and clutch worn to the rivets.

 

[dfarr67]

Got your moneys worth out that one....