The banner above is an advertisment - if it asks you to download software, please ignore.
Site News - 4/9 Saab Owners' Convention Day Pass Raffle | 3/26 M Car Covers (by State of Nine)

The Saab Network Mailing List FAQ
Search:

Main Index
[ Prev by Date ] [ Next by Date ] Member Login / Signup - Members see fewer ads. - Latest Member Gallery Photos
Re: Bleeding Clutch Hydraulics
Posted by stottler (more from stottler) on Fri, 2 Nov 2001 13:33:25
In Reply to: , Kok Chen, Sat, 17 Dec 1988 12:00:00 

The clutch hydraulics on the 99 (and old-style 900) can be bled similar to
brakes ('Up!' 'Open!' 'Down' 'Closed!'), but first you have to make sure all
the hydraulic parts are in good shape.  The master cylinder is a fairly
common failure - it either 'sucks air' on the upstroke or (in the case of
one of my 99s) just sticks with the pedal at the floor.  I had to rebuild
that one along side the Garden State Parkway on a Sunday evening.  The
master is pretty easy to replace; I think the two bolts are inside the car.
It's a good time to take the pedal off and and weld up and rebore the now
elongated hole where the pivot pin goes through.    I've never had problems
with the clutch hose, but any hydraulic hose in any 23 year old car has to
be suspect!  Various Saab hydraulic hoses have been known to swell
internally and cause trouble.   The slave cylinder also can go south and
need rebuilding - I assume the rebuild kit is readily available from Saab.
It's a pain to remove the slave in the 99 - you have to pull the radiator to
get the clutch output shaft out before you can remove the slave.   You
probably have various sources available locally for rebuilding slave/master
cylinders if you don't want to do it yourself.  You can also send them to
White Post Restorations - pricey, but you get a lifetime guarantee.   For
any/all parts for older Saabs, I recommend you contact Marty Adams at Meyer
Garage (www.meyersaab.com) - he's good about locating what you need.

I also had one other odd clutch bleeding incident on a 99....At one point I
replaced the brake master cylinder and fluid reservior.  A couple of years
later when I was flushing the brake system, I couldn't get any fluid to
bleed through the clutch system (which shares the same fluid reservior as
the brakes).  A month or so and 2 mechanics later, it turned out that they
use the same fluid reservior for both manual trans and automatic trans cars.
I had never clipped the end off the plastic nipple to allow the fluid to
flow into the inlet hose for the clutch master.  I'm still amazed that the
clutch worked fine for 2 years with only the fluid standing in the inlet
tube!

Good Luck!

Gary Stottler
'78 99 Turbo 202,000 miles
'64 GT850 94,000 miles

Posts in this Thread:
StateOfNine.com
SaabClub.com
Jak Stoll Performance
M Car Covers
Ad Available

The content on this site may not be republished without permission. Copyright © 1988-2024 - The Saab Network - saabnet.com.
For usage guidelines, see the Mission & Privacy Notice.
[Contact | Site Map | Saabnet.com on Facebook | Saabnet.com on Twitter | Shop Amazon via TSN | Site Donations]

This is a moderated FAQ - Posting is a privilege, not a right. Unsolicited commercial postings are not allowed (no Spam). Please, no For Sale or Wanted postings, SERIOUSLY. Classifieds are to be listed in The Saab Network Classifieds pages. This is a problem solving forum for over 250,000 Saab owners, so expect to see problems discussed here even though our cars are generally very reliable. This is not an anything goes type of forum. TSN has been a moderated forum since 1988. For usage guidelines, see the TSN Mission and Purpose Page. Please remember that you are not anonymous
Your address is: 18.117.196.217 - Using Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com) - Logged.
Site Members do not see red text instructions, green links, and bottom of the page banners.
Click here to see all the Site Membership Benefits!