Bad Slave Cylinder Again?

[rs1971]

Hi All,

First a quick bit of background: I have a 2003 Ford Ranger with the 4.0L V6. It's a 4x4 with a manual transmission. At about 60k miles and 4 and a half years ago, my clutch slave cylinder went bad. Obviously I had it replaced.

Everything has been fine until about a week and a half ago when it started behaving similarly. I wasn't really having trouble shifting gears, but the pedal was really soft, only catching at the very bottom. I have recently moved, so I called a different mechanic than the one who did the work the first time. He only spent a few minutes looking at it and really only at the reservoir (which was empty) and right in that area for leaks. He said that he didn't see anything and that it had to be the slave cylinder.

After he left, I filled the reservoir and that seems to have helped a lot. I realize that this likely isn't a solution as it must be leaking from somewhere. But I'm just adding it for completeness. Anyway, I just have a couple of quick questions since I am 90% clueless about this stuff. Is there any reason to hope that he is wrong and that it might be the master cylinder? And if not, is it unusual to go through two slave cylinders in 99k miles?

Thanks in advance for any input anyone might have.

 

[93 4x4]

It's possibility, if you are losing fluid somethings wrong it's leaking some wear. Is the bottom of the bell housing wet/ have drips on it?

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

I don't know about most people, but it seems a lot of new slave cylinders are junk. I've put 3 or 4 new slave cylinders in my F-150 in the past 5 years. The factory one was working fine, but I had to replace the clutch and I figured... well, since I'm already in the bellhousing, I should put a new one in so I don't have to mess with it if it goes in 20k miles.... ha ha ha...

The first few would start leaking the first cold day that we had where I drove it. Since I didn't want to mess with it, I'd just refill the master cylinder on a regular basis until the leak got too much. The last one that I had go bad froze solid, bearing and all, and when that happened, the plastic rod end on my master cylinder detonated.