Today, I was on the way to visit my dad in hospital and had my mom with me in the car. I had to change into 4th gear and the clutch pedal gave way halfway through and it just ended up sitting stuck to the floor. I worked my foot in underneath the pedal and got it back up, and found it impossible to push down. Turned around and drove back home without the clutch while swearing and trying to keep from coming to a complete stop at any time.
There's a lock ring or circlip that holds the clutch slave cylinder in place and after 22 years of being married to the slave cylinder it apparently had had enough of that. I found the circlip happily hugging the piston dust cover and it took a fair bit of coercion and twisting its arms to get it back to where it belongs. The slave cylinder sits right where it's supposed to now, hopefully it'll stay like that for another five or six years which is how long I plan to keep the car running.
Unfortunately, before I got the slave cylinder back in place, I just had to test if either of the cylinders had seized. I stepped on the clutch pedal until it suddenly sank to the floor, thereby shooting the piston out of the slave cylinder, breaking off part of the plastic neck for the dust cover in the process. I removed it from the car and carefully pushed the piston back in place wtih a C clamp, tested to see if the seal was still intact and heaved a sigh of relief when I found it able to hold a vacuum.
Now, I'm about halfway through airing out the clutch, had to stop due to lack of daylight and because of wind picking up. Tomorrow, I'll either complete the job or run out of brake fluid.
Found this tool to be the only way of me getting the air out of the clutch cylinders and piping, used it to swap out the brake fluid when I bought the car two years ago:
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