Intermittent clutch engagement problems

[liquid10]

Recently my 04 Ranger (4.0, 5spd manual, 4x4) became very difficult to get into gear from neutral, sometimes impossible unless you were moving and matched revs. Same thing with shifting gears, not happening unless matched revs. The clutch fluid resivoir was pretty much empty, so I topped it off and had no immediate improvement in my problem.

At first I was thinking the slave cylinder is done. However the weird thing is that i've continued to drive the truck and now the clutch will sometimes function normally. Has anyone else experienced a problem like this, If so what turned out to be the cause? I'm hoping that maybe the system just needs to be bled because it ran dry. The truck has 120k miles on it, mostly highway driving.

Thanks

 

[monsterchuck]

You can try bleeding it to see if it helps, but with the way the master cylinder is designed, it's nearly impossible to properly bleed without removing the master. I will sometimes just fill the reservoir and pump the snot out of the pedal. The fluid is pumped through so turbulently that most, if not all, the air eventually works it's way out. You still need to figure out where all your fluid went, though.

 

[Fordisthebest30]

take the master cylinder and slave cylinder line out and bench bleed it. The bends in the line make it almost impossible to bleed the air. Theres a great video on youtube that shows you how to bench bleed the rangers master

 

[RonD]

Yes, bleed the system.

The loss of fluid means you have a leak that needs to be ID and fixed, or you could end up sucking air back into the system, when it gets low again.

 

[liquid10]

Thanks all for the info. I drove it last night and the clutch worked fine the whole time, so I guess the air is working its way out of the system. I've put about 500 miles on it since this started happening. I checked the fluid about 300 miles ago and the level hadn't changed. I'll be sure to check the fluid frequently until I can afford to take the clutch/hydraulic system apart

 

[Andy D]

Just a WAG, was there a cold snap and then did it warm up? I had an old Datsun PU that would need a bleeding every so often. But that would fix it for a long time.