Z1 CSC Elimination Kit Clutch Bleeding Issue?

scruffydog

Hi,

I recently got the Z1 CSC Elimination kit and the Z1 Clutch & Flywheel Kit. I installed the transmission back in the car a week ago and since then I've been stuck bleeding the clutch.



The issue is I have very little pressure and the Clutch Pedal won't return back to original position.

I follow Nissan's FSM clutch bleeding procedure which I have had success when I swapped out the stock Clutch line with a SS braided one years ago.



But with this Z1 CSC Elimination kit, I am unable to get the pedal back.

There seem to be air in the system. I called Z1 and they told me to buy a new Master.



At first I had high hopes, I even bench bled the master but once i hooked up everything and start bleeding, the pedal never got past 25% pressure.

I made some progress by eliminating the secondary cylinder when I took it out and compressed it fully with a clamp and then bled the line.


NOTE: I always bled with the bleeding Valve pointing up, this was just for the picture after it's shut.

The pedal was super firm and got back to full travel. But with the secondary cylinder compressed fully, the clutch pedal wasn’t able to go down.

Which means the master is good and no leak. But when I released the clamp of the 2nd cylinder, it must have vacuumed air from somewhere. And when I tried bleeding with it installed back onto the car. I’m back to where I was. Dead to soft clutch pedal.

Any advise would be great. The instructions from Z1 doesn't really say anything about how this secondary cylinder is supposed to be bled aside from following Nissan's FSM - I'm assumming just hook everything up and it should be bled out the air.

I've spent 4 days bleeding the clutch system and 3 bottles of Motul 660 fluid in.

My speculation is either:
1) The Slave Cylinder from Z1 is faulty and leaks
2) I'm doing something wrong with the clutch bleeding process with a Pull Style type of Secondary Cylinder (Most Traditional Secondary Cylinders are Push style)

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Magnetic Black 2010 370z
Scruffydog's Journal

Spooler

Do you have an RJM pedal. IF so, you need to set it to stock with no adjustment on it. The clutch will bleed properly then if you have installed everything correctly. You also have to adjust the slave cylinder arm for proper engagement.

scruffydog

I do not have the RJM pedal. What adjustment should I be looking to do? Does this explain why the pedal is so low to the ground and only have 25% pressure?

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Magnetic Black 2010 370z
Scruffydog's Journal

ByThaBay

We’re both in NorCal. I can help you. PM me.

Spooler

Yes, you need to lengthen the arm on the slave cylinder. Should have some instructions I would think.

JARblue

Ding ding ding ding ding!!

Unless your master is toast or improperly adjusted or the slave cylinder is not properly adjusted... I went through 4 of their cylinders in about 50K miles

Although it is possible everything is fine and you just still have air in the system. The bleeding process can be a pain with or without the slave kit. I gravity bleed now. Takes more time but less effort. Bench bleed the master if you can.

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scruffydog

Thank you all for helping out. It's nice to have such a good community.

I finally got the Z1 CSC Elimination Kit working.

To let you guys know how I came about the solution, I did 2 things - I don't exactly know which one of the process fixed the problem but I'll share what I did.

1) Removed Helper Spring
I followed the instructions to remove the helper spring. Though I'm not sure what this did (As it seemed more like a recommendation rather than a requirement). I later installed it back, so it's safe to say having it does not prevent the kit from working. I suspect this wasn't really the root cause. However, this helper spring does prevent the pedal from springing back to rest position if there's not sufficient amount of clutch pressure. The clutch pedal requires quite a sufficient amount of back pressure to overcome the spring.

2) Bleeding the Z1 Clutch Slave Cylinder
I know a lot of you guys suggest it had to do with adjusting the length of the extension rod of the slave. I can 100% say that has very little to nothing to do with why that didn't solve my problem. I would say this section the instruction manual was really horribly written. It says nothing on how to bleed the slave cylinder. I've adjusted the slave from full length to shortest yet still unable to get the air out of the system.

I didn't give up after trying many hours because I suspect the slave was good as it didn't leak any fluid out. However, I did come to a major discovery.
The hole where the adjustment/extension rod threads into actually sucks air in to the piston (Non-fluid side). Recall when I had fully clamped down the slave with a clamp and got full pedal again? and when I released it and the piston extended back out and the pedal went dead?

So I plugged my fingers over the hole after taken out the extended stud and cycled the piston and pushed both the fluid and air out the clutch fluid reservoir. This was a random surprise because I got fluid overflowing from the reservoir as it's topped off and uncapped. But I was happy to know after doing that, and then did gravity bleed. That alone fixed the problem. After that, I just to make sure, I also did the clutch pedal pump, bleed (1 person) by jamming a jack lever to the driver seat, it didn't really make much of a difference since gravity bleed did 95%+ if not all of the job of getting air out of the system.

After I got a solid clutch pedal, I was super happy. I got the car started and had to get the car back on the lift to make a slight tweak to the adjustment rod to reduce the length so the clutch could properly disengage without having to depress all the way down to the floor to shift. As a matter of fact, my 1st adjustment was so bad, I could still hear the gear having trouble shifting as it wasn't depressing the clutch enough.

Any how, I got it adjusted to where it was before. My clutch is definitely much heavier. Not sure if it's due to the new Z1 clutch kit (Not the road race one) or if it's related to this style of clutch mechanism (with throw out fork & slave) vs the Concentric Slave Cylinder makes the pedal much firmer.

Just happy to have this done and hope others will find this thread useful as I found no information on this topic. And the Z1 guys weren't very helpful with my situation.

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Magnetic Black 2010 370z
Scruffydog's Journal

nis350

this is probably worse than the OEM's.

Spooler

The heavy clutch is due to the pressure plate. I have a stock feeling triple disk clutch. It has an external slave conversion also that was made by the clutch manufacturer, ATS.