Hi Folks,
I have recently acquired a 1998 VW Jetta from a family member. Recently the clutch pedal has been staying at the floor after depressing it. I can manually pull the pedal back up and have not had an issue getting the vehicle into gear until the other day. Doing my research I’ve concluded it’s the clutch master cylinder that’s bad. I’m eliminating the slave cylinder as I found a receipt in the glovebox from a VW dealer showing it had been replaced only a few thousand miles ago.
Anyway, now that I know what needs to be replaced, I have to find a replacement part. The clutch master cylinder part ranges in price from $80 to $100 from an aftermarket parts supply. Since a hydraulic system fails because the rubber plungers go bad, I go to thinking about just rebuilding the master however I can not seem to find one for this particular vehicle. Does anyone know of a source for a rebuild kit (not the entire part) for this vehicle? It seems to be non-existent! I know most rebuild kits are a fraction of the cost of a replacement part so I of course would like to proceed with the cheaper alternative. I’m very handy/mechanically inclined I’m just not a full fledged experienced mechanic. I have no issues or concerns jumping in and rebuilding the master I just need to find the correct parts.
For what it’s worth, I have also bled the clutch hydraulics so that’s not the problem (air in the system).
Nobody rebuilds brake/clutch master cylinders anymore is because they’re made from aluminum alloy"s. And you can’t hone out the bore on an aluminum alloy with a regular honing stone without removing mass amounts of material.
Same seems to hold for brake master cylinders and wheel cylinders, it is all but impossible for me to find the rebuild kits any more. I used to rebuild them all the time and save some money, but I’ve just given up on that idea and just replace the part now. One retail parts guy said it was due to liability issues, but I think that may have been something he said to get me out the door and stop complaining and bothering him! As an upside, the new parts seems to work longer than my hone-and-rebuild jobs. And for my Ford truck and Corolla, the parts are reasonably priced. I had to replace a clutch master cylinder on my Corolla, I think the part price was around $50, maybe a little less.
Junkyard is a nice place. If you find one that even looks like the one you have, it might have a good inside that fits yours or swap the whole thing. You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you might just find, you get what you need…
@pleasedodgevan2, he can get new replacement for about $100 with a warranty. No way would I get a used junkyard piece of unknown condition if I could get a replacement that cheap.
For a great many people $100 isn’t cheap, @B100. But the time and expense of driving around to run down a good(?) used hydraulic part makes the part much more expensive than the purchase price.
A common realization these days ;
’’ Sure, they make ‘em in pieces…but they don’t SELL the pieces.’'
Any of those internal pieces are only sold by the gross to the assemblers, not one at a time.
Good comment by @circuitsmith above, OP should get a flashlight, look up under the dash, to make sure the return spring on the clutch pedal hasn’t fallen off. It won’t fix the hydraulics problem, but the pedal should still return to home base. This happened on my Corolla’s clutch pedal, the spring fell off, I didn’t realize it, and I speculate it may have contributed to the failure of the clutch master cylinder. I discovered and fixed the pedal spring problem when I replaced the failed MC, and no issues with the clutch hydraulics since, in 15 years.