Here's another slave cylinder failure mode for you. About 6 months
after I bought my car, the clutch lost all hydraulic pressure. The
exposed area of the push rod had become pitted and corroded over
time, and the rubber boot had become brittle with age, it no longer
clung tightly around the slave. The rough pitted surface of the
pushrod no longer slid smoothly through the hole in the rubber boot.
Eventually the boot caught on the pushrod and slipped off the slave
cylinder. This exposed the inside of the slave to the elements,
causing it to corrode and pit. These pits then damaged the rubber
seal, causing loss of pressure. (Of course, I discovered all the
above after the fact. :-( ) Even with a hone and rebuild kit, I
was unable to salvage the slave cylinder; the pitting was just too
deep. I ended up using the slave off the parts car, and sanding the
pits out of the pushrod as best I could. The brand-new boot that
came with the rebuild kit seems to work well, even with the pitted
pushrod. The clutch hydraulics haven't given me any problems for
over a year now.
The moral of the story is: check your pushrod for corrosion/pitting
and make darn sure that rubber boot fits tight. It's the only thing
between Mother Nature and the inside wall of your slave cylinder.
I'm concerned about the pitting of the pushrod. The way things are
now, it's going to happen again. Anyone have any ideas on what I
might do to prevent it?
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T.J. Higgins uunet!ingr!higgins (UUCP)
Intergraph Corp. M/S IW17A5 higgins@ingr.com (Internet)
One Madison Industrial Park
Huntsville, AL 35894-0001 "Well-weathered leather, hot metal
(205) 730-7922 and oil, the scent of country air"
-Rush
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