So today I managed to pull the clutch master cylinder out of the Ford Ranger. Though in the process I made the mistake of removing a snap ring I though would hold the master cylinder's push rod in place. Nope, instead that snap ring holds the guts of the master cylinder in. I've never seen this kind of thing before, but it didn't take me very long at all to figure out what I had just done.

Thankfully I found that the master cylinder is not destroyed by this process and was able to reassemble the master cylinder on the bench by pushing the guts back in and reinstalling the snap ring.

That said it did help me get the master cylinder out easier because that's less stuff I had to try and maneuver around the back corner of the engine compartment. That push-rod is at least 8 inches long and when one is already struggling to pull the master cylinder, plus it's unremovable plumbing, it helps a lot.

Man that tubing snakes all over the place. It drops down to the middle of the frame, then goes over the top of the frame rail, then back down again to the bell housing (the bulbous area between the workings of the transmission and the engine, often a part of the transmission). To get the tubing in and out you have to force it in between the body and plastic inner fender well. Feels like at times you're gonna break it and man that's one part I don't want to have to buy...

Bench bleeding turned out to be much, much faster than I thought it would be. Within 5 minutes of starting I already had a solid "pedal" feel. Then the herbology people came in and sprayed the area where the truck was sitting to kill off vegetation, preventing me from reinstalling the master cylinder for half an hour.

Once getting some other work down, I finally got around to reinstalling the master cylinder, a process that took an hour because I had to work out how fish the plumbing down properly. That was an hour in weather was well over 90^o.

After I finally got everything connected and bleed some more air out of the slave cylinder (the hydraulic device that actually actuates the clutch components), I was feeling pretty confident as I went to grab the jumper box (portal battery used for jump starting). Perhaps I even had a spring in my step.

That quickly disappeared when I turned the key to Start. Nothing happened, well aside from the "check oil" light coming on, which most likely is referring to the fact there is zero oil pressure in the system which is a perfectly normal thing when the engine isn't running. Though now as I think about it, perhaps there is actually some interrupt to the solenoid if there is low oil, but I doubt it. But anyway there wasn't even a click from the starter.

Me and my instructor did do some quick diagnostics and found that the starter is receiving power, but the solenoid was not. A bit of starter basics, the starter is usually powered at all times with a direct lead from the battery (which is why you should always disconnect the battery prior to working with the starter). It is the starter solenoid, which is often part of the starter, that actually switches the starter on. The solenoid is usually quite audible if the starter remains silent.

Unfortunately I couldn't do any further work on the truck as my teacher had to leave and this meant I had to leave too.

Also worth mentioning is that the Toyota Corolla that I was told I could potentially have after finding out that the 300M was no longer a possible option was finally donated today. It has 173,000 miles, far more than I was told it would have. It goes through a quart of oil every 1,000 miles, which is considered to be very high oil consumption. The whole car vibrates pretty badly, most likely due to bad engine mounts. I also heard something about transmission problems. And that's just some of the things the owners said...

I had already tossed that option out the window, but now I've gone outside, picked it up and threw it into an incinerator. I don't have the time or money to repair that car.

Also found out that the truck has had mice in the engine compartment. How do I know? Because some of the emissions equipment has been chewed up. It doesn't seem like was destroyed will make the truck fail emissions, but it does concern me. Perhaps the damage is recent and the no-start is the result of mice damage...

So for the past few hours I've been quite sad to have more work to do on this truck... Hopefully the reason the truck won't start is not because the engine is seized. Because the solenoid makes no noise, it's unlikely that the engine is seized but things now seem more uncertain.