I just had the front seals replaced in my 93 accord standard shift wagon. After about 4 days the clutch started feeling “soft” and now it’s almost down to the floor in order to engage it. I wonder if this has anything to do with the seal replacement? Would appreciate any thoughts on this.
Many thanks.
carkat
No. You have a bad master or slave clutch cylinders.
Ok thanks, do you know if that is horribly expensive or have a ball park on it.
Many thanks.
carkat
ps the car only has 70 K on it, this seems low for the master and slave cylinder to fail, no?
The car is 21 years old. In this case, cylinder failure does not have much to do with wear. Rubber parts degrade with age just as much. Anything made of rubber is suspect on your low mileage car.
Thanks, very much. I appreciate you taking the time to post and share your insights.
I speak from experience. My current car is an '88 Supra. I’m constantly on the vigil for a hose or seal that I may have missed over the years. I had two coolant hoses on the back side of the engine pop leaks within weeks of each other. I decidd to change them all out after that. Another thing to worry about.
Arghh, thanks I think.
It’s in the shop today I will alert them to that issue.
Many thanks for responding
I doubt the two are related, on a car that age things can start happening.
Low miles would actually be an indicator to me of more clutch system wear than high miles. You’ll probably operate the clutch 20 times in a 5 mile city drive to work. But get on the highway and you can go 50-100 miles without touching the pedal.
Yes, it’s been a great car and I have taken good care of it but there’s no garage so it’s out in the weather and it is old enough to drink. Might be time to part. I just hope I can hold on to it for another year.
Thanks
My early 90’s Corolla had the clutch master cylinder fail at about 80 k. The replacement failed at about 200K. So 70K on a car of that vintage isn’t out of line.
I’m not sure what a mechanic would charge, but the parts cost to replace my Corolla’s clutch master cylinder was around $40 as I recall. The access is very tight to remove and install it, so I had to buy a special tool which cost $20. And it took about 3 hours. That’s me, a driveway DIY’er. An actual mechanic could do the job in about an hour, hour and half at most, I expect.
So if he charged $100 per hour and it took him 1.5 hours, that’s $150 in labor, and say $50 in parts. So $200 would be my estimate if the problem is just the clutch master cylinder.
Thanks, George. I got it fixed yesterday and it was $400.00. They noticed that the oil pan was leaking and want $230 for that as well as the front axle boot starting to crack $205.00 for that. I don’t know. It’s low mileage but if it’s going to start costing $1200.00 a year to fix it might be time to hang it up. I can’t do the work myself.
$1200 a year is $100 a month. That is still cheap transportation.
$400 does seem a little steep for simply replacing the clutch master cylinder, but not entirely out of line. I’m assuming that’s all they did. If they did anything more than that – like checking or replacing the slave cylinder too-- then $400 definitely seems reasonable. I wouldn’t be overly concerned with the price they charged. And prices to do repairs can vary widely as the amount of mechanics time to do the job and parts cost varies depending on the specific car, how it is equipped, and the model year.
You definitely want to get that CV boot problem fixed. It will soon tear, and then instead of just the boot, you’ll be replacing the CV joint too. Not something to loose sleep over, CV joints are replaced all the time these days, usually just be replacing the whole axel with a rebuilt one. But replacing just the boot – especially if it is only the outboard boot – could save you a pretty penny. Note that on some axel designs these days it is impossible to replace the boot without replacing the CV joint too. If so, that’s just the way it goes.
As far as spending $1200 per year to maintain and repair a used car. That’s $100/month, and that’s considerably less than a new car payment. If a new car payment is $400/month, you are in the black $300 per month by keeping the used car seems to me. That’s not an insignificant sum. But there is the problem – difficult to quantify in terms of dollars and cents – of the inconvenience of the car stop working when you need a car to get to work, etc. The time to take it to the shop, and waiting for it to be fixed. All in all, it’s a compromise.
Your question about whether to repair or replace, t’s sort of like a re-roof job for your house. You might come close to having a heart attack if you hear a quote of $18,000 to do a complete re-roof job on a house that has – for years – had a neglected roof. But that’s a very reasonable $50 per month if the new roof lasts 30 years. So it depends on how you think about it.
Glad you got the clutch problem fixed. Best of luck to you.
I would not worry about the pan leak unless you begin to notice a lot of oil loss. You can buy a lot of oil for the cost of replacing a pan gasket, and it may not even be the pan gasket that is leaking. Any oil leak on this engine is going to migrate down to the pan lip and look like a leaking pan gasket.
The axle boot is critical, a split boot can cause the axle to become very noisy in just a week or two, then the axle will have to be replaced at about $550 each. But you need to get both boots changed on each axle, a total of 4 boots. If the $205 quote was for both boots on one axle, that is a good price. If it was for the outer boot only, then get a quote to replace both. It should only be about $25-30 higher because the inner boots has to be removed and then reinstalled in order to replace the outer boot, so the additional cost is for the boot only, no additional labor.
When one boot goes, the others won’t be far behind so you should get both sides done, but if one side is pretty good, you may be able to delay the second side for a month or two, but be careful or you will end up buying a new axle.
One more caution, the front axle repair, if they are quoting to replace the front axle with a reman axle instead of replacing the boots, then that is asking for trouble. Often it is cheaper to use a reman instead of replacing the boots, but more often than not, the reman axles are junk, just worn out old axles with new boots done in a “factory” environment with minimum wage labor.