Zirconocene

Hi there all-

In what may well be a poor decision (opinions all over the place on the matter!) I have decided to rebuild my clutch slave cylinder. I have the whole thing apart and have received the rebuild kit. It's all pretty straightforward apart from one thing and I'd like your help with it.

Here is a picture of the cup/piston that actuates the pushrod in the slave cylinder:

Filthy, confusing thing

Below that assembly is the new gasket that came with the rebuild kit. My question for the community is how to disassemble things to replace the gasket. It may also be the case that it can't be disassembled, but then how do you get the new gasket on? It doesn't seem stretchy enough.

My attempts to unscrew things have not been fruitful and, before I take stronger measures, I wanted to get some advice from the forum.

I have been really unsuccessful in finding a good DIY for this process on the web so I'll be documenting this and post my own DIY. Most of it is straightforward but it's a little bit of an information black hole on this rebuild.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

931guru

My suggestion would be to heat the seal and the cup in hot water (probably around 160 F) to soften the seal, then pry it off. Of course, soften the new seal to install it, too.

badkarma308

I cleaned mine in a little ultrasonic cleaner I got off Amazon for $30. Pulled the old seal off with a dental pick type tool, lubed the new one up with fresh clean brake fluid and worked it on there. I also flex-honed the cylinder and polished the piston by chucking the little end in my drill and running it against some 0000 steel wool; again using fresh clean brake fluid as lubricant in both "machining" processes. Worked like a champ on reassembly.

Zirconocene

badkarma308: Timely response, thank you! I'll post pictures later but that's essentially what I also just did. I ended up pinching the old seal with my fingers and was able to get a flathead screwdriver under it to pry it out. Not real tough and it doesn't seem to have affected the seal too much (though I will use the new one on reassembly).

So long as I had everything apart I also cleaned/honed the inside of the slave cylinder and, as you did, chucked the pushrod into a drill press and got after it with a variety of polishing sandpapers (up to 2000, I think; that's what we had lying around). The very bottom of the cup had a little bit of rust, as well, so that got sanded/polished, and the outside of the cup had some areas that looked like there was built up, baked on gunk, so that got cleaned up too.

I will plan on putting together a DIY for this and will use 931guru's suggestion to soak the new gasket in hot water before I install it, but I like the brake fluid idea and given how easy it was to remove the old gasket, maybe I'm stressing over nothing.

biosurfer1

I'm in the middle of rebuilding mine too and I stupidly did not take a picture of how that seal was orientated before I took it off so thank you for posting a close up!!