75 Diesel clutch problem - advice sought

'Tis a bit odd..............



Yesterday the clutch travel increased markedly, to the point where it would only just bite. When home I looked at the clutch reservoir - and it was empty.



I did a bit of reading on here, and established a few things. Brake cylinders do fail, and if its the slave cylinder its a gearbox off job. However, the first thing is to bleed the clutch which might give me a temporary solution. So this is what I've just done.



The result wasn't what I wanted - or expected. Fluid came out, and the level in the reservoir dropped slightly - but now the clutch pedal stays permanently lying on the floor and doesn't return at all. To try to bleed it my assistant was reduced to lying in the footwell and pulling the pedal up by hand.



I'm puzzled. The action of pressing the pedal down once with the nipple open has completely removed all the clutch operation. How can this be? I can understand how air in the system would mean pressing the pedal won't operate the clutch, but there should still be some return action when the pedal is released. I'm just about resigned to replacing the slave cylinder - so I might as well do clutch and flywheel as the car has done 130k miles - but I want to understand why it suddenly doesn't work at all.

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