Hey guys I'm a new member here asking for any insight from anyone thats willing to help, so as the title says I have an 09 Accent manual trans, got the car and drove amazing for a few months and all of a sudden I found the gear shifter impossible to put into gear even with the clutch fully depressed while the car is on, but with the car off I can cycle through all the gears seamlessly. I decided to install a new slave cylinder and bleed the hydraulic system, and still did not get any better so today I ended up replacing the clutch, pressure plate and throwout bearing and once I slapped everything back together still no improvement. Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance

 

I have a 2020 Accent 6MT and at about 50000km (Feb 2023) it started to get an issue with "clutch drag" - meaning pushing the pedal did not cause the clutch to fully disengage. The problem was/is intermittent - sometimes I am really fighting the synchronizers and other times it works okay. With double clutching i could mostly work around it. However given reverse has no syncro, sometimes the clutch just wont stop dragging and i need to shut the car off and restart already in reverse to get it in R. I think this clutch drag is maybe a precursor issue to your issue where you really cannot fully disengage. The dealership said the master cylinder was the problem and replaced that under warranty but it was not resolved. I took it back about a week later and the bled the lines again but it still was not fixed. Then a couple weeks later I had annual service and I asked them to replace the brake/clutch fluid. It seemed that this helped, but unfortunately maybe only temporarily. That was all in February, and since about the last month 20000km later it is acting up again. I am having the dealer look again next week...

You might try replacing your clutch fluid?

 

I could be wrong about this, but I believe someone is missing the boat.

There is more to the hydraulic clutch system than the master cyl and I suspect the part that might be overlooked is the slave cyl that actually releases the clutch assy.

Might be a good move to verify there is no problem there.

 

Hanky, I assume the slave cylinder idea is referring to my issue. It very well could be. I have not been inspired at all by the dealership's understanding of a manual transmission. The service advisor initially was totally convinced there was a separate fluid, not shared with the brakes. They did not properly bleed the lines...twice..after replacing the master cylinder. MT is supposed to be more reliable, but now they are so uncommon, this actually cuts the other way. Even service techs if they are young may have very little experience on them, I think.

When they look next week it will be at a different dealership vs the initial work.

 

I posted this thread a couple weeks ago and just now saw my email notifying me of replies but just to let you guys know I ended up doing a complete hydraulic clutch component overhaul. I replaced my master and slave cylinders along with the steel line between them and ultimatley ended up adjusting the master cylinder threaded rod going to the clutch pedal for some slop it had and after bleeding the entire system it worked amazingly. I really appreciate the insight from you guys though!

 

Thanks for that update Shimzon. I will tell my dealership of your success next week XD

 

Mr.R.

This situation is not new to me at all.
Having been a mechanic,Lead man and Service Mgr.
No matter how right you might be , some folks in the repair business feel like they are getting their feathers ruffled when we tell them how to do the job.
I'm sure you will use discretion when you bring the vehicle back for another try.
All we can hope for is they replace only the defective part and not everything we suggest, especially if we have to pay for it.
Thanks for the update and would like to hear from you when all is done.
Hydraulic clutch systems are not that complicated, but as you stated, the new guys may not have that much experience with them.

 

So in the past couple days I would say the problem has gotten worse. Its kind of nice because it means the shop should have no issue with reproducing the problem next week and I wont get some crap about "just push the clutch longer for enough time for spindown" that I got last time.

What I am wondering is whether this new information could help diagnose it. When I was driving this week and playing around to try to work with the malfunctioning transmission, I found that I can kind of move where the friction point on the clutch pedal is. When I have driven for a while in a given gear, or if I just start up the car, then the clutch will almost always drag--meaning the friction point is right at the bottom of the pedal. When that is the case, I can feel resistance when moving the selector out of the current gear, and I can feel the syncros resist the new gear too, often with audible clash. However, if I pump the clutch repeatedly, like 3-5 times, then the friction point will move up to a more normal position halfway thru the pedal. Then for the next minute or two if I am doing frequent shifts such as acceleration, then it kind of works ok. It is like I am bleeding out pressure in the actuation or something. Idk. The level of fluid in the reservoir still looks okay though so I guess the hydraulics aren't leaking at least not too bad.

Hanky, you had suggested perhaps this is a slave cylinder issue. Is it still consistent?

 

Whatever it is , it is involving the operation of the slave cyl.
If air is trapped in the hydraulic line to the slave cyl, the air could be getting compressed and the motion from the master is not getting completely transferred to the slave cyl.

It is no secret , some systems can be difficult to get all the air out and require persistence..
We could sit here and throw out all kinds of possibilities, but there is nothing like actually being there to see exactly what is or is not happening.
Most times there is provision for bleeding the line from the master to the slave and it could be as simple as that..

Until you get it corrected you can do the following,
Because the higher speed gear positions have synchronizers to make shifting onto those gears, easier, you might try shifting to one of those gears which will slow down the gears in the trans and many times make shifting into first gear somewhat easier.

 

Updating after I had the car in the shop this week. I think there must be air getting in those lines as everythign is consistent with it..but it is not forever fixed yet unfortunately.

I happened to take it in in a very warm spell for November, and the shop called me to tell me they could not reproduce the issue. As this would have meant I would need to pay the diagnostic fee I insisted to do a drive with the mechanic the next day. It was still very warm and barely acted up, but I was able to explain the issues to the mechanic directly in a way he was willing to try bleeding the lines. And then as I was reversing into the parking spot at the end of the test drive, reverse gear refused to spin down until i pressed the clutch two/tree times and tried again, really bolstering my case.

So they did the bleed under warranty and I paid nothing and it was great - the engagement point was normal and much higher on the pedal.

However now, about 1 week and 1000km later it is already starting to act up again. So I think there must be a leak somewhere, but the dealership seems to mostly just want to gaslight me there is no problem every time I take it in, so I am not sure how to get this resolved. I have to wait for the problem to get worse before taking it in for that reason, at the least. And probably will end up needing to get an actual transmission shop to look at it and make a case against Hyundai corporate I guess?