|
Hi Andy,
No, I didn't measure slave/master travel distances, but that would be a good idea should the problem reappear on mine. I've put maybe 100 miles on it since the last fluid bleed with the cylinder out and haven't gotten a single time where the old "grind" came back where I didn't dare force it into first or reverse. I still do have the little "clunk" on occasion--kind of a "hitch in the giddy-up" when engaging first gear that seems benign enough now that I'm not going to worry about it.
As an aside, I figure there's a pretty high percentage of owners who don't even consider things like that as a problem. My whole experience with trying to get a pair of Dellortos in good tune and then switching to Solexes gave me that impression. Seems like lots of people just live with little flat spots during acceleration as an "they all do that" problem.
At this point, I'm not sure if the clunk is just because first gear is not synchronized as Andrew mentioned, or is something that is going south or misadjusted. Wild guess is that it is related to my problem before and then in conjunction with a bit of air in the lines, it was enough to cause the grinding. Now with all the air purged, it's just enough clutch disengagement to keep it from grinding at least until the clunk gets worse and gears don't fully disengage.
I also have the clutch out bit of bearing noise. But, from owning 5 BMWs between '71 and '89 models, most have done that as well (even louder) and in my time as owner I've never actually had the throwout bearing go out or had other clutch problems--including owning an E30 M3 that did that for at least a half dozen years. So, I know it's a long road downhill with the BMWs at least and I'm thinking the same on Alfas.
My clutch issue does have more of an "air in the lines" sense based on how it happened and I'm not sure that's the case with yours. Mine was going fine for weeks of near daily driving when I first got the car last October. Then while out running a quick errand and getting back in the car after a 5-minute stop, all the sudden it started to grind into first and reverse. It did this for a few days in a row, although all I was doing at that point was starting it and checking it rather than driving it anywhere since grinding gears obviously is not a good thing. Then I got underneath the car and was just fiddling with the slave cylinder while checking a suggestion that perhaps the snap rings became dislodged because the slave cylinder on mine had been recently replaced. Those were fine, but I was just "exercising" the piston rod a bit for the heck of it. I drive it again and the grinding was gone! Assumption is that I moved around some air bubbles enough to make a difference. But, I did find that it came back in the situation where I'd just let the car idle out of gear for a couple minutes, just never as bad as the original time last fall when it first happened. Car was stored over winter and then in Spring it was the occasional grinding after extended idling again--just enough not to trust the car especially turning it over for someone else to drive. My first attempt at bleeding the fluid maybe made a bit of a difference (with the slave cylinder mounted) as far as the amount of grinding. But, it was the second slave cylinder out bleed that made much more of a difference--grinding hasn't come back to date. Sorry for all the detail, just thought it would help you in determining whether it might be the same problem or not.
Good luck and I'll certainly update this post if anything changes on mine.
Gary
__________________
73 Giulia Super 2.0 [COLOR="Plum"]([B]Prugna[/B])[/COLOR]
|