Clutch on the floor

So during all the cold weather I just left the coup standing. Went on a trip yesterday and the clutch biting point is just off the floor. It works fine, but also noticed the brake light going and off while driving along. The clutch is less than 6 months old, brakes worked fine. Does anyone have any pointers? The clutch was working perfectly last time I drove it. There was maybe a smell of 'burning' brake fluid when I got out the car, but hard to say - definitely a smell of something. Maybe the fluid is completely knackered and the cold just killed it off...but the brakes worked ok?

Also, stopped at a garage to top up the fluid but then found the bonnet release lever is loose and not working. I'm sure I've seen some instructions on here on how to get at the latch but can't find in the search. Does anyone know where I can look?

Possible it wasn't bled properly but if it was working after you had it changed then guess the slave cylinder, accessible underneath the battery tray.

If you can lift the pedal up to normal position with your foot and it stays there but starts to drop again whilst stationary, then likely it's the master cylinder.


In the howto section...

Freeing a Stuck Bonnet

Ok, thanks very much for link and advise. Yeah, when driving, if I take my foot off the clutch, the pedal comes back up then goes down with a thunk (the pedal is loose at the top end).

With a faulty slave, you lose pedal pressure altogether.

Seals within the master cylinder seem to fail giving the impression it's ok one minute then the pedal sinks the next.

Recently there have been a few coupes displaying these latter symptoms (including mine which was fixed) perhaps due to the 20-odd years most of them have been running. Changing the master sorted it.

Having just replaced both master and slave clutch cylinders I can safely say that it was not an easy job. Very fiddly getting the master changed and I needed the patience of a saint. Slave cylinder was a piece of p*** though. Bleeding bleeding was not easy either on my own or with someone controlling the pedal, I ended up getting a tool to draw fluid through the system. Good luck

Ok BBR, thanks for the heads-up but I may well just take it to Motormech in brum.
I'm no mechanic but I can do a bit, unfortunately the road I live on is a massive hill, my drive is a massive hill, I can get the car in the garage but it means sticking all the garage junk into storage. That means I can only do stuff on the surface or big stuff where I take the car off the road and empty the garage (only happened once and is expensive).
I'll get the bonnet up and see where to go from there.

Wow Simon - that does indeed sound challenging at best.
Motormech sure do come highly recommended and will do you proud.
Good luck.