Clutch problems. 03 plate TD4.

Hi,
I've got a TD4 freelander on an 03 plate with i've had for about 3 years now, and its covered about 53,000 miles. so far its been great, until the other day. The clutch isn't happy... its been playing up for a week or two in that you press the clutch peddle to the floor but the clutch doesn't take away drive so it stalls. if you pump the peddle rapidly 3 or 4 times you can get it in gear but then it starts moving like you have taken the clutch up when u haven't. Basically i think its losing hydrolic pressure. when i've put my head in the drivers foot well you can hear a hissing noise coming from the cylinder thing above the peddel? is this the master cyliner? could that be the problem, i've guessing a hissing noise isn't normal but no ideas what is causeing the problem? any advice would be great? is this a part i could change my self, my friend showed me how to bleed the clutch system but that hasn't made any difference...
Thanks, Chris.

Sounds like its the master cylinder. Very easy to change. As they are a sealed for life unit not sure that you attemps to bleed it would do much good.
If not the master cylinder then it will be the slave cylinder that is located inside the bulk head and a lot of work to change. We did a clutch yesterday on a TD4 7 hours of a job.

Mine is in for same today.... I believe you can check inside the car with a torch up and behind the dash, behind where the master is located. Your looking for leaks of the hydraulic fluid. If there is none, then good chance its the slave thats gone.

Im told mine will be either £500 or £950 if the DMF requires changing too.

I believe however that as well as changing the master and slave, they change the clutch plate too while the box is out.

Steve

Think its probably your master cylinder, don't think you will see any leaks it will be bypassing the piston seals back to the little reservoir, if you had a leak it would have used up all the fluid & pedal would go to the floor & stay there. They are supposed to be a sealed system but you can top them up & bleed them although in your case I don't think it will do any good. New master cylinder will set you back about £95 +vat. You might need a special tool to seperate the "quick release" connector between slave cylinder & master cylinder pipes.

I had problem where the clutch sounded like it was not disengaging properly ( 03 TD4 56,000 miles) and was a struggle to get it into first and second. I took it to the garage and had the master cylinder replaced. This resolved the problem short term but started happening again a few months later. So instead of replacing again or having whole clutch system replaced which is what they recommended = £££££ I did the following.

First thing I did was to release the seal from the top of the reservoir of the master cylinder and pump the clutch a bit, I then resealed it. 6 months ago this happened and not a problem since.

These are not sealed on the TD4 and can be topped up if low. More than likely you have a leak somewhere or just air in system.
Try the above and see if this works. If not then might be more serious problem = ££££

MickO'CTD4: I had a similar problem and replaced the master cyl. 6 months later the slave failed. So I had to have slave and I also had the clutch replaced at the same time. It cost about £400 inc labour but I think that was a very cheap garage

Thank you all for the advice, i went for it and bought my self a master cylinder then got my mate a few beers to fit it for me, it works !!
Now for my next concern - i am just worried from what people have said is the slave cylinder likely to follow, i know a couple of yu said you'd ended up changing both so i am just wondering if it usually follows that once one has played up the other will be soon to follow, i am just wondering if i need to get saving or consider getting rid while its working fine? Any body had any good experence of getting a master cylinder fixed and no further problems for a year or two, well, no clutch probs anyway. lol.
Thanks again, Chris.

I think mine lasted about 6 months. It failed the night before I was due to drive to the airport to go on holiday! I was lucky it didn't go the next day on the way to the airport. We would have missed the flight. So make sure you have good recovery cover and start saving!