Clutch soft after me being an idiot

Hi,
well, to make a long story short, clutch worked problem free until now.

Two hours ago i was poking around the car and found out the rubber boot on the clutch slave cylinder was totally perished. Since it was the first time i ever saw the thing i played a bit, pushed the rod cca 1cm into the slave cylinder a few times (of course i pulled it back also).

The clutch pedal now travels without any resistance for about 2/3 of its travel, and then luckily performs normal, so it just releases the clutch.
Have i pushed air into the system by being an idiot?

Thanks,
Crt

yes ,and hopefully you havent ruined seal, bleed it with a pipe and bottle

Thanks jamesmartin, i'll do that certainly as i don't know when was the last time the hydraulic fluid was bled anyway.
In the mean time, i had to drive my G/F to the train station this morning, and the car would not go into reverse or 1st gear, as the clutch was not releasing entirely. However, after the initial cursing and kicking the beast i tried to depress the pedal about 30-40 times with the car turned off, and the clutch seems to be working almost normally now. I'll see what will happen in a few hours.

Never mind. I don't know if it was just the odd hour of the day, the clutch is still soft as a limp weenie. I'll have to check it out tomorrow.

If clutch worked ok after pumping the pedal a few times its down to air in the system, just bleed it that should cure it.

Thanks guys, that really was easy. Bleeding the clutch took 5 minutes, easiest bleeding of my life. And it cured the problem, better still, the clutch pedal has far more feel to it than before.

I know it is 3 months later but a follow-up is necessary. The bleeding helped for about two months, then two weeks ago things started to get fishy once again. The clutch pedal would get limp over the night at first. I could revive it by pumping in few dozen times. Today i finally took the slave cylinder off the rangie to overhaul it.

Part cost: 1 Euro (replacement piston seal and dust seal)
Time: 3 hours, but i could have done it in 0.5 now. Only thing that was difficult was bleeding the clutch all by myself, but i succeeded in the end with a help in form of a plastic bottle and a length of pipe... where are all the drinking buddies when you need them to do something useful...

Now i'm a happy camper, the clutch pedal feels good, well, maybe a bit on the harder side. At least the G/F will be delighted coz of the hardness