So it's Saturday morning after a buddy's gf's b-day party, I wake up hungover at their house around 8am and decide to go home and sleep, walk outside, lock their door behind me open up the G and the clutch pedal is pegged to the floor.. WTF? It still started up, but the clutch would not function, it was either on the floor or all the way out. I drive my car pretty aggressively within normal limits, but no burnouts, no donuts, no racing. I was pretty confused.

My car had moved since I parked it the night before so you can imagine I was ready to start pointing fingers at whoever moved it (was praying I didn't since I was three sheets to the wind the night before). Turned out to be "buddy's girlfriend's sister" who was sober enough to move my car, so she did, she drives a manual as a daily driver so I have no reason to suspect foul play. She said the car had to be pushed back into the driveway. The only thing I can think of is her accidentally putting it in 6th gear vice Reverse and revving the **** out of it... but I'll never know.

Infiniti Roadside Assistance to the rescue, got my car towed to the dealership and was praying it wasn't considered "Normal Wear & Tear" because yours truly would be footing the bill. My service advisor called me back before I even returned home with the loaner G37x Sedan saying that the slave cylinder gave out!

Lo and behold, that is not "Normal W&T" and is thus covered under warranty.. lovely.

Car is at high 21k, had it since Feb 2008, first owner. My service advisor also informed me that I should've noticed a little fading, but I have no idea... I did think my clutch was gone one day when the radio was too loud and I revved the **** out of 2nd gear.. but it returned to normal.

Cheers.

 

Glad to hear a positive review.. The moment I read took her to the dealer I was like O shiat this is going bad!

But yeah kind of odd for a slave cylinder to go out @ 21k

 

so did they say why it failed? slow leak? broken seal?

 

My guess is that you were just the lucky guy who got a defective clutch slave cylinder, although it does seem odd that it just happened to go out when the sister's girlfriend's brother (or whoever) moved the car. But realistically, what can you do to a clutch slave cylinder to cause it to fail? It's just like a brake slave cylinder, and they don't go out just because you slam on the brakes. Chalk it up to luck of the draw, my best guess.

 

All she said on the phone was "good news, it's the slave cylinder that went out" and I didn't ask any more questions since I was relieved I wasn't paying for anything (except for gas? $20.00 gas charge on loaners, is this new? i don't remember paying for the loaner).

When I find out I'll let ya know.

 

Defective part. They don't just usually fail from wear unless it's extremely excessive. The last Nisan one I had to fail had over 150K on it.

 

For what it's worth, the very early (1970 or so) 240Z's had the same issue if the wrong fluid (I think brake fluid) was put in the clutch master tank. I'm told it ate the seals in the master and slave units.

 

Had a 86 300ZX that went through two slave and one master clutch cylinder. I never added any type of fluid before they failed. Damn lucky if this doesn't cause an accident since you can't disengage the driveline when this occurs other than by forcing the shifter to neutral.

 

Glad it's covered!

How would we check for clutch fade? would it be that the gears start feeling notchy from 1st to 2nd to 3rd?

Did the oil leak out or did the seal give away?

There's always learners abuse when figuring out a new clutch system...but in those cases usually the disc/plate would go before the hydraulics.

 

I've experienced a slave cylinder failure on a couple of occasions. If it blows a seal then you lose any ability to disengage the clutch. You can yank the car out of gear or by revving the engine just so you might be able to pop it into first without killing it and then shift by rev matching, but basically you are driving with no clutch. On the other hand, if it is just leaking fluid, then you gradually lose pedal until the clutch will no longer disengage. So yes it gets harder to shift and you end up grinding gears. Both these situations are very detrimental to your tranny, as you can probably guess.

 

I experienced something similar. I drove for about 2 hours and when i came to a stop my clutch just felt like air. I pressed it down it stayed there, and pulled back up it stayed there. I turned off my car and about 2 mins later it felt normal again. Any Ideas why this happened? I was going to post something but just forgot and this post reminded me. My clutch feels normal now. Should I take to the dealership and say something?

 

Possibly it is leaking fluid somewhere and might have air in the system. I would def have it checked, otherwise you might find yourself without a clutch at a most inconvenient time.

 

Ok guys. My cars at the dealer right now getting diagnosed. My clutch went out on me today and i could not get it into gear. It felt really light like i was stepping on air.

The service manager said that they would charge me labor just even take a look at it...and if its covered under warranty then im good. If not then it's 2500 for a new clutch out of my pocket.

The guy asked for my wheel locks...i was like why do you need to take off my wheels to get to the tranny....he replies hey why don't you get your car out of here. What a peice of ****. Seriously. Treating customers with no respect.

 

08 17k on mine btw.

 

The clutch is considered a normal wear and tear part therefore it isn't covered. I'm assuming he meant if the slave cylinder went bad then it's covered and they would credit you back labor plus whatever parts they had to replace. A clutch doesn't normally go bad within 17k miles unless you abuse the hell out of it. I had 28k on mine when I replaced it with the JWT clutch / flywheel and mine had a good 75k left in it and I'm a pretty spirited driver, but I also rev-match.