When I bought my car last may the PO had just had the clutch itself, master and slave cylinders replaced. Master was shiny new with clean new fluid.


I haven't touched the system nor has my car been to any mechanic since and now the master is blown out with the pedal on the floor and the fluid is black. I towed it to a trusted shop for this because I don't have time to mess with it and need the car every day, fixed fast. Shop has quoted $900 to replace master, slave and lines. That's parts + hours and hours of labor, I forgot exactly how many.


So just curious, how could my fluid turn black and destroy the system without any contamination? And how reasonable is $900 to fix? My first thought is that it's outrageous but I really do trust this shop. I just can't deal with it on my own right now.

 

Possibly the rubber brake line's have deteriorated. That would release particle 's of black crud.

So have them replace those as well.

900 bucks is a lot of money.

but it does take some time to do. I replaced everything when I did it. Sadly the slave cylinder blew out. So I had it towed to my home. Not fun.

 

I just got the car back and they decided to just flush out the lines because they still looked good. So the black stuff must have come from the rubber parts inside the cylinder? I got the old parts so I will take them apart and see what's going on in there. The mechanic is dead certain that the fluid was contaminated from the outside but I know that is impossible.


The cause of failure seems to be this seal that looks rotten or damaged.






I was wondering if you guys could tell by looking at these if they are OEM or not? Because the mechanic thinks, as I do, that the PO put in crap from autozone which would mean the clutch is also autozone part and he said that cheap clutches usually last only a couple of years in his experience. So now I'm worried about my clutch going out any day.

Is it true in your experience that non-OEM clutches don't last very long?

But if these are Nissan parts then the clutch should be too and last a long time yet.