quick question about clutch system

Apologies if this has been asked before.

My clutch pedal sunk to the floor and stayed there earlier tonight.
First the pedal lost a lot of travel but the clutch still disengaged,
and as I drove home it got worse and worse until finally it wouldn't
disengage at all.

Poking around under the hood there's a lot of brake fluid on the mounts
around the transmission and in that general location - that, to me,
says that somewhere I broke a fluid line in the clutch system. However,
wouldn't a broken line cause the clutch to stop working entirely all at
once? Wouldn't each press of the pedal just push more fluid out of the
hole instead of into the slave cylinder?

Also, as I filled up the reservoir, the level didn't go down at all. It
was completely dry when I took the cover off but it only swallowed a
few ml of fluid and didn't drop one bit. Wouldn't a broken line just
allow the fluid to pour straight out (therefore lowering the level in
the reservoir)?

Tomorrow I'm going to climb under and have a better look (poking around
at night with a tiny LED flashlight isn't too good), and if I can find
any obviously ruptured lines I'll assume I've found the problem. I'm
hoping it's just a broken line as we just had the transmission replaced
not 500km ago and I'll be really aggravated if the wrench munged
something up in the clutch while he was in there.

Thanks for any replies,

Isaac

ps. i should mention this is on a 94 Civic

 

likely the seals inside the slave cylinder are leaking.

 

I agree with SoCal, probably the slave cylinder though, there is a flex
line from the firewall to the tranny. You want to watch that brake fluid,
it eats paint.

 

Well, I'm gonna have it towed to the shop that did the tranny today and
hopefully it was their mistake as I'm broke as hell, and the catch 22
is I'm a courier so I can't earn any more money to fix the car without
driving the car. Ain't life grand?

 

Isaac wrote:

.. . . . . . . . shop that did the tranny today . . . . . . .

--------------------

That's the mysterious fact you forgot to tell us ! !

They probably kinked / twisted the lower line and now it won't hold
pressure. It's their fault, they should make it good.

'Curly'

 

Turns out the master cylinder blew a seal. We replaced both cylinders
and all is good now.