blufie

I have been researching an issue on clutch petal adjustment for a couple of days and have a problem that I hope someone else has already solved.

The truck is 2002 Taco V6 5-speed.
Issue is that when you fully depress the clutch petal, it will initially desengage the clutch around an inch from the floor, which is fine, but if the petal is held in this position for 1-2 mins, the clutch will begin to very slowly engage again, to the point where you can't shift. It also does this is the clutch is used a lot in a short time. Quickly pumping the petal a few times does NOT correct the issue, but fully raising the clutch petal a few second and then depressing it does.

Simple fix I thought, new master cyl or slave cyl. There were no leaks in the clutch hydraulic system btw. So, I replaced the mater cylinder and the slave cylinder, flushed the line, filled with new fluid and both pressure bled and used the old pump-n-crack method to remove all air. No luck, the problem still existed. Next, I measured the clutch arm positions when it was working and not and found there was nearly 1/4 inch less when the issue was happening. This means somehow the slave cylinder is allowed to compress 1/4" after a while or during a lot of usage, very odd.

I read about the cracked bracket issue but I could not find evidence of that on this truck and I would think that problem would be more consistent and immediate than this one.

I just found the link to the petal adjustment proceedure from the service manual and will perform that today and see if it helps but I wanted to put this out to the community for any help.

Thanks all for you time

nothingbetter

I'm having a similar issue. Why are you holding the clutch pedal for 1-2 minutes?

Jomoka

I have a vaguely similar issue on my 99 5 spd 4Runner. The engagement point is rather inconsistent. Sometimes low, sometimes high. If it engages 'low' you can usually give it a quick pump and it will engage higher. However, I haven't noticed it leaking down.

Leaking down with no external leaks, and no loss of fluid would almost have to be an internal leak in the master cylinder, allowing fluid past the piston, and back into the reservoir. That's very peculiar that a MC change didn't fix it.

blufie

I agree that the master cylinder should have solved such an issue.

Today, I checked the clutch pedal adjustment. Not easy to understand exactly where the service manual is trying to get you to measure but this pedal was close.

I thought about it some and decided that if I was able to raise the pedal a small amount and then correct the free play, I could get a little more travel that might help to compensate for the back drain. The pedal really was fully engaging way too close to the floor in my opinion. So, my adjustment moved the full engage up to a comfortable position and the truck is easily drivable. So much so that I would never know there is a bleed off issue under normal circumstances. I need some more seat time to see if I will encounter the issue again under a lot heavy clutch use, but i think this will qualify as a fix for me.

I wonder if many of these trucks have a little back drain on full extension that goes unnoticed because the driver seldom triggers the condition to notice it?

The problem I had gotten too was that rapid on-off the clutch in quick succession was triggering the same symptoms as holding it too long. Now that symptom appears for be gone.

Last comment, I noticed that the slave cylinder had to extend almost an 1 inch before it contacted the clutch arm and that I could push the clutch arm back a bit and compress the slave as well. Makes me wonder if there is an issue with the pressure plate - like the fingers being worn out. It has 170k miles on it so the fact it works at all is amazing :-).

Thanks for the replies and hope this helps someone else. Pretty cool forum.

My daily driver is a dual-fuel (gas/Cng) 2006 Taco sport quad cab 4x4 auto and I may post some of my Cng exploits later.