hi all

I have a 5-door 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara with Manual transmission, it has a little over 109,000 kilometers on its odo. I have been having problems with the shifting. Its really hard to shift to any gear, but much more especially when going for reverse. I also noticed that clutch fluid needs to be filled up atleast every month. However, even if the clutch fluid bottle is filled to the "full" level, it still is hard to shift. I haven't seen a noticeable leak of the fluid on the engine bay and under the pedals.

 Any advice on this? Is this a common problem of Grand Vitara's?

If it continually needs brake fluid in the clutch master cylinder and is hard to shift I would say the clutch slave cylinder is bad. It is located outside the bell housing and isn't too bad to change.

|removethispart|@CG98X Is there a repair kit for this kind of repair? btw thanks for the reply

If it turns out not to be the slave cylinder causing the problem, it could be a warped clutch plate.

This would cause the clutch to not disengage completely and would have similar symptoms to the bad slave cylinder. My GV has done around the same KM's and I suspect I have this problem as it is very hard to get into reverse without crunching. New oil in the gearbox might improve things as well.

so far my clutch disenages fine. it is just hard to shift to a gear specially if the car is stationary, and very much pronounced when shifting to reverse. I guess I would try first with the adding of gear oil first and see if it improves anything. Although im suspecting that the problem is somewhere in the clutch system because of the emptying of the fluid bottle (although slow rate).

btw, is the repair/inspection of the slave cylinder an easy thing to do? im quite comfortable of mechanical tweaking and have at least a basic set of tools. I also have an access to a ramp should I need it. I really would like to do the repair on my own.

it is just hard to shift to a gear specially if the car is stationary, and very much pronounced when shifting to reverse.

Don't forget that you must push the stick all the way to the left before you put it in reverse.  It's some where in the manual, something to prevent you from accedentally putting it in reverse.

satanael21 - I had a similar problem only without the leaking - I dealt with it for a long time before fixing it. The problem turned out to be that the clutch release bearing (throw out bearing) had scored grooves into the clutch pressure plate and it wouldn't completely release the clutch when you pressed the pedal down - hence making it difficult to engage gears.  Reverse is even worse because there are no synchro's on that gear.  It's not too expensive for the clutch kit (~$150-250 from rockauto.com) but the trans needs to be removed.  Hopefully yours is just the slave cylinder or something easy - definitely find and fix that leak first. 

Due to your leak, you've got air in the system and I'll bet that the clutch pedal now has too much free play resulting in a less that full disengagement of the clutch and causing your gear grinding situation. 

It's either the master or slave cylinder that's leaking (maybe both).

if there is a leak in the master, would there be any puddling around it or atleast grime accumulating around it, because mine doesn't have any. I haven't crawled under just yet to check on the cylinder slave if it has any though.

btw, my GV is a left hand drive, so I have to push it all the way to the right before pulling it downwards to engage the reverse gear. and most of the time before it engages the reverse, crunching is very common occurence.

if there is a leak in the master, would there be any puddling around it or at least grime accumulating around it

Look up under the dash where the clutch linkage pokes through. The master's are known to leak out of the back and dribble down on to your inside floor. 

Novadon: ive just looked under the pedals, it seems clean...

Then I'd suspect the slave cylinder mounted on the bell housing is leaking. It's the only place left, cept' the interconnecting tube and it's connections.

btw, my GV is a left hand drive, so I have to push it all the way to the right before pulling it downwards to engage the reverse gear. and most of the time before it engages the reverse, crunching is very common occurence.

Doesn't matter left or right hand drive when it comes to the lock out. You have to basically move the shifter from the left side of the transmission to the right and down into reverse to fully disengage the lockout. think of it as going from first to reverse. It works that way to stop people from trying to put it into "6th" gear on the highway, and consequently destroying things.

Granted its probably not related to your problem, but just something to try.