Clutch master cylinder rebuild kits?

While on my way to LA this morning, the ##!!%&!!! plastic hydraulic line from my clutch slave to the clutch master blew out. Nifty 3/16" hole in the side of it. No idea why it did this.

Ok..so I manage to creep up to the nearest town, and buy a piece of

3/8 gas line, some clamps and brake fluid and cut the line, and sleeved it.

Since the Mazda/Ranger pickups use a bastard master cylinder, the only possible way to bleed one is to lift the floor mat, pull off the starter override switch and pop the snap ring that holds the piston inside. This I did. I gently pulled it upwards until I got a bit of brake fluid tricking out, then replaced everything, refilled the reservoir, and tried the clutch. This resulted in a stream of break fluid spewing out of the end of the master cylinder. Taking it all back apart again, I completely removed the piston, inspected the two cup seals, back flushed with clean brake fluid..and reassembled. Still blew brake fluid. At this point I was screwed, so starting it in gear, I drove back down the Grapevine , and the 40 odd miles to my home, with no clutch.

Going around to all of the parts houses..no one stocks a rebuild kit for the master cylinder and they all want $90USD for a new complete cylinder assembly.

WTF??????????????

Are rebuild kits no longer available? Like I really can afford to spend $90 for two cup seals no bigger than .5" in diameter.

#$%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gunner

"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide." - Ayn Rand, from "Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapons"

Reply to
Gunner
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What year truck?

michael

Reply to
michael

1994 Mazda B3000.

Same as the Ford Ranger.

Gunner

"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide." - Ayn Rand, from "Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapons"

Reply to
Gunner

How about a guess since your in trouble? Maybe the problem is with the slave which caused the line to break form over pressure. If the cups look ok you should be able to hold your tongue just right and get it together without leaking till you find new parts. Maybe twist it in.

Plastic line that goes down under a vehicle where one rock or branch could break it? What's this world coming to? The last pool I did had plastic fences in the neighborhood and the one I'm on now has the top cap of the block wall glued on with liquid nails and a sloppy job at that.

Wish I could help , but even my Toy's hydraulic clutch gets me to scratching my head at times. Once in awhile it will start acting like I ran it out of fluid and I'll check it all out and find nothing and then it will start working again.

Reply to
Sunworshipper

For the standard-impaired... How do you drive without a clutch? I understand it's not hard to shift up, but down? Or did you just stay in 1st the whole way?

Regards,

Robin

Reply to
Robin S.

I'll ask about tomorrow. Someone may have a kit or master gathering dust.

Buckshot's Daddy

Reply to
michael

I honed the inside of the cylinder, and twisted it in. Its working now. At least for a while.

The hole looked exactly like somone fired a BB from the inside. Really strange.

I put a brass double ended ferral compression fitting on as a splice and a bit of 3/16 tubing inside to compress against. Seems to be holding pressure..so far.

It wouldnt be so bad, as the truck has 337,000 miles on it, but I put a new master cylinder on it less than a year ago when the $%#@!!!! slave cylinder went into meltdown. That bastard wraps around the pilot shaft INSIDE the bell housing and carries the throw out bearing. So to replace it, you have to drop the tranny. And its nearly all plastic and when it goes into melt down..it really does melt down.

I figured that it was time to replace everything clutch related, so I did.

Gunner

"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide." - Ayn Rand, from "Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapons"

Reply to
Gunner

"Robin S." wrote in news:COjSc.21083$ snipped-for-privacy@news20.bellglobal.com:

You match engine RPM to tranny (road) speed. Learned this years ago when driving big trucks that had no synchro's. You didn't drive them with a clutch. The clutch was only for stopping/starting.

Reply to
Anthony

That doesn't sound like fun, on my Toy its on the outside of the tranny and it's all metal. Lots of luck.

Reply to
Sunworshipper

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 09:46:23 GMT, Anthony calmly ranted:

Dad, who learned how to drive before they HAD synchros in trannies, taught that to me when I had my old Corvair. I'd amaze friends when I drove around town, up/down-shifting the whole time without the clutch except at stop signs/lights. Poor Robin has led a sheltered life. ;)

Another thing I learned with that Corvair is that I could shut the key off just before coming up on some friend, then turn it back on just as I go to them. The glasspacks would be full of gas and the ignition switch would light it. It sounded like a cherry bomb went off right next to them. I stopped that practice when one guy threw a rock at me for scaring him. Ahh, the charm of youth!

Reply to
Larry Jaques

That sounds like the classic failure mode for plastic flex line. A little kink or bend forms a bubble and blows out under pressure. Leaves a dragged out bit of thin plastic around the hole. Looks like a bullet hole, without an entry. Yech!

Any U-pick wreckers in your 'hood ? Around here I can figure on spending about $8 for a clucth cylinder of any sort, from the places I shop. If you go that way, grab a spare... :-)

I have been finding the parts dealers don't want to stock the nickel and dime rebuild kits as much as they used to. I recently had to spend about 45 minutes on the phone to find someone that would even admit that I could get a clutch disc for my 86 B2000, without having to buy a complete kit for $200. UAP NAPA has been good to me, in general.

Good luck! Cheers Trevor Jones

Reply to
Trevor Jones

A prime example of why I wouldn't touch anything made by Ford, and haven't since 1965...

Bob

Reply to
Bob Robinson

Simple rule of thumb: When upshifting, your revs drop to match the new gear. When downshifting, your revs rise to meet the new gear.

Basic process: I've got an upshift coming up. Pull the tranny out of gear. Allow engine to wind down to approximately the right range (and this is almost always a "practice until you figure it out for this particular car" concept). Revs are about right? OK, try for the gear I'm wanting. Maybe need to play with the throttle a little to match up more closely. Once I'm in the new gear, mash or release the throttle as needed to achieve desired ground speed. Done.

Downshifting is exactly the reverse: Pull it out of the gear you're in, wind the engine up to the right revs (again, a "learn by practice" thing) for the ground speed you're doing, then try for the gear you're looking for, playing with the throttle as needed to get it to fall in.

The key concept involved is this: At any given speed, in a specific gear, there is an engine RPM that exactly matches the speed the input shaft of the transmission is turning. You're looking for that engine speed. Once you find it on a given vehicle, that's your shift point in and out of that gear. As long as the ground speed and engine RPMs match, you'll be able to shift into or out of that gear with either no grind at all, or only the tiniest bit of grind.

A real-world example... My '82 Mazda 626 is rolling along at 25 MPH according to the speedo. What gear I'm currently in is irrelevant - I might even be in neutral. Because I know this car well, I know that if I wind the engine up to

*ABOUT* 3500 RPM, I'll be able to slip into first without too much, if any, trouble or grind. If I want second gear, I need to dump RPMs until I hit roughly 2K on the tach. If I want third, then I'm going to have to drop the RPMs to about 1300. For fourth, I need my revs at about 900. (which is right up against the limit of practical for this car) For fifth, I can just plain forget it at 25MPH. Nothing I can do from the driver's seat can get the engine slowed down enough to match the speed of the input shaft. In theory, about 400-500 RPM should let me do it, but since this engine idles at 650-750 RPM depending on whether the AC is on or not, it's simply not going to happen without a lot of grinding and cussing, and even with a liberal amount of both, still probably won't happen.
Reply to
Don Bruder

|| || I have been finding the parts dealers don't want to stock the nickel ||and dime rebuild kits as much as they used to. I recently had to spend ||about 45 minutes on the phone to find someone that would even admit that ||I could get a clutch disc for my 86 B2000, without having to buy a ||complete kit for $200.

That's true. I think it has to do with the core handling & asbestos issues. plus, the orientals across the water make them new for pennies. Texas Parts Guy

Reply to
Rex B

Ive haunted all the pick a parts in my neck of the woods and as yet have to be able to find this particular model. They seem to run forever. I really really need to find one that had been wrecked from the rear, as all my smog parts are original, including the O2 sensors and really need total replacement. I need to be able to strip one down. I keep looking though.

Gunner

"There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism - by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide." - Ayn Rand, from "Foreign Policy Drains U.S. of Main Weapons"

Reply to
Gunner

Gunner

Try to locate a brake cylinder repair kit with the corect cup size. many of the older parts stores had the individual cups available.

JRW

Reply to
J.R. Williams

||Gunner || ||Try to locate a brake cylinder repair kit with the corect cup size. ||many of the older parts stores had the individual cups available.

I have a whole assortment of them. What size? Texas Parts Guy

Reply to
Rex B

That was my move when I was having clutch MC trouble a while back. Darn thing was eating cups. Went through three rebuild kits in 3 months. Finally gave up on the Autozone/Kragen's BS and went to a *REAL* auto-parts store (not Autozone, not Kragens, not anything similar - I'm talking about the kind of place where you walk in and the smell of machine oil gives you a friendly slap upside the head as a welcome, there are stools at the counter so you can cop a squat and jawbone with the guy behind the counter (who probably has grease-stains on his coveralls, and maybe a streak of grease on his nose as he comes out of the back wiping Go-Jo off his hands 'cause he just came in from helping a customer put a newly bought part on his vehicle out in the parking lot) about what it is you need, and so on - a *REAL* auto-parts store.) and got myself half a dozen cups that were aimed at brake-slaves for a buck and a half out the door. Been using those ever since.

In my case, they need to be cut down just slightly (the lip was a hair - maybe two millimeters, if that - too "tall", so it completely blocked the inlet port in the cylinder, although the diameter was right) by brushing the open end across the wheel of the bench grinder a couple of times, but otherwise, they were perfect. I'm running on the second one of them now, in fact - the first one I cut down too far, so it died the same way the (much lighter) "intended for the clutch MC" cups were going. The slightly longer and heavier lip on the brake cups never encounters the bad spot in the cylinder (A razor-edge on the forward part of the inlet port that, with the edge of the piston, forms a shear), so it doesn't get pushed up into the inlet port by the piston and "clipped off". The one in there now has been going strong for... Gotta be close to 7 months now, with no sign at all of trouble.

I hear the nanny-state folks already... "What if it fails 'cause you used the wrong parts!?!? You could kill somebody!" Hardly... It's a clutch, not brakes or steering. A clutch is, at least to anyone I consider to be a minimally skilled driver of a stick, nothing more than a convenience item for everything but starting from a dead stop. Other than that specific situation, there is no actual "gotta have it to make things work" need for a clutch. (Yes, I know, slap-shifting isn't always fun and easy, but it *IS* doable in *EVERY* vehicle with a manual transmission, whether it's a stick or "on the tree", that I've ever gotten behind the wheel of) So the clutch fails. Big fat hairy deal. Worst case scenario: I find out I've got no clutch "the hard way", by stepping on it and getting no response. Oooh!!!! Panic situation! We're all gonna die!!!! NOT!

How hard is it to slap the shifter into neutral and coast to the side of the road? Or, more likely, just keep on driving, shifting clutchless if needed, until I find someplace to either turn around and go home to the toolkit, or if I've got my usual travelling kit with me, sit there and do the 20 minute cup-swap? Never mind the fact that I have yet to meet a vehicle that can't be stopped by mashing the brakes, regardless of the gear it might be "stuck" in. Sure, it'll probably stall out in the process, but so what?

Nah... safety considerations on this substitution are nil, so save the lecture for someone who actually needs it.

Of course, there's another plus: the rebuild kit for my MC is (or was - probably closer to $25 now, what with inflation) $19.68 plus tax. It consists of a new (or perhaps salvaged? No way to be certain, really) aluminum piston, a spring, and a new rubber cup. Other than the first time, I've never replaced the piston or spring - They simply don't wear out. Why should I buy a $20 kit when all I actually need is a 25 cent rubber and 20 minutes to put it in?

Reply to
Don Bruder

Yeah, my experience has been that replacement parts NEVER last as long as the originals. Oh, except that time the pressure plate blew on my Vega with 18000 miles on it! I had a choice of 2 clutch discs, about 7.5" and 14" and of course chose the big one. It was now practically impossible for anyone but me to drive it (one I learned the magic clutch trick that I called the "inertial dump", contrary to proper technique in all other vehicles) but the big clutch disc was still going strong at 76000 miles!

Otherwise, absolutely NOTHING I've ever replaced on a car lasted as long as the original part.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

This is a trick I use to get cup seals back in without damage:

Get some thin string, preferably the least "fuzzy" you can find. Very fine monofilament nylon is best. When you are ready to put the cup seal into the cylinder (Master or Slave - both work) carefully wind the string continuously in a single layer around the cup seal from the outside end to the inside (open) end. This will compress the seal at the cupped open end so that you can insert it easily into the cylinder. Use just enough tension so that the seal is compressed to a smaller diameter than the ID of the cylinder. Insert it only a short distance into the cylinder with the loose far end of the string sticking out enough so that you can pull it out slowly as you unwind it. As you unwind the string, simultaneously slide the cup into the cylinder. When all the string is unwound, the seal should be all the way into the cylinder, with no kinks or wrinkles. This really works.

-- Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)

I don't have to like Bush and Cheney (Or Kerry, for that matter) to love America

Reply to
Bob Chilcoat

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