I have bled through the upper bleeder on two separate occasions now, and my symptoms keep coming back after a little bit of driving time (release point will gradually raise on the clutch pedal, making it increasingly more stiff, until the point finally passes the threshold of clutch pedal travel and I get infinite slippage and have to wait an hour or two before it settles back down to get anywhere). I've noticed when I've been bleeding, there's an air pocket that constantly sits in the tube about an inch away from the bleeder valve. Fluid is still draining through into my container, but I can't really tell when any air bubbles stop, because that one just constantly sits there and gets a little bigger/smaller as I progress.

With this information presented, I have two questions:

1) Is a 1/4" diameter hose tight enough? It seems to fit snug enough over the valve, but when I move the hose around, that always-constant air bubble will creep back towards the valve. motorvate.ca suggests a 1/8" hose.

2) Do you HAVE to bleed from both the lower and upper bleeders? I've just been doing the upper and assumed if I put enough fluid through, that it would all change out. I don't want to start taking off things to get to the lower bleeder if it's not necessary...I do want to take a look in there at the hose to the slave cyl eventually, but just to get my car operable for more than 15 minutes at a time right now, I'd opt for the convenience route if it's possible. And I believe the Haynes only mentions bleeding from the upper as well.

Really a bummer to have to limp my max around like this - I'm killing the clutch when the release point gets so high that it just starts slipping all over the place. I'd take it to a shop at this point, but I already took it to one tranny place that claimed there was no leak anywhere in the system and just filled up the reservoir w/o bleeding, so my trust with the local shops is pretty low. Thanks guys.

 

I'll take #2. You MUST bleed from both spots.

 

DISCLAIMER: I have never dealt with the hydraulic system on my max. My experience is limited to changing the clutch master cylinder on my boy's Audi a few weeks ago.

I would say that you absolutely need to bleed from the lower bleeder by the slave cylinder. That's all we did on my buddies car and it worked fine. It took quite some time, but eventually all the air will come out. We were actually still getting bubbles when we stopped, but we read that sometimes air will leak in from around the bleeder screw. My advice would be to bleed from the lower bleeder until you are getting no bubbles or consistent, very uniform bubbles, then close the bleeder screw with the tube on. That worked great for us. Keeping the bleeder up high also kept us from going through tons of fluid since the bubbles rise to the top.

I'm probably telling you stuff you already know, but I'm still kinda amped that we were able to do what we did with no trouble...

 

D'oh - I hope you don't have to remove more than the air intake piping/etc and the battery to get to the lower.

I checked the haynes and verified that they make no mention to a lower bleeder in the process. Weird.

Hopefully I find an obvious leak when I'm in there. Might try snagging a tighter hose too, if the max can make it to Home Depot and back...

Thanks for the posts

 

to get to the slave cylinder, all you gotta remove is the snorkel and the little l-tube to the resonator. you'll have enough room to slip an open ended wrench in there to bleed it.
BTW, where is the upper bleed valve? after reinstalling my rebuilt tranny, i just bled from the slave nipple and all works fine.

 

You are almost there...once you're getting a steady flow out of your top, close that and move to the slave bleeder valve. Once you bleed there...you should not have any issues afterwards..thats what I did, and I did it a couple of times.

good luck with it