syoo8

Hi everyone,

I'm doing a timing-belt/water pump job on my '87 S4.

Similar to my experience with the timing belt job on my '86.5, I'm having trouble removing the clutch slave rod from the bell housing. As per the WSM, I loosened the clutch hose (actually I loosened the entire bracket by unfastening the two bolts) to get more wiggle room.



I pushed the rod into the clutch slave cylinder as far as possible, but there is still not enough clearance to get the rod out of the bell housing.

When doing the TB job on the 86.5, I yanked the rod out of the clutch slave-- which necessitated rebuilding the clutch slave (the rubber diaphragm tore) and ultimately bleeding the clutch slave (which I did not do a particularly good job of.)

I'd really like to avoid yanking the rod out... do any of you have any tricks up your sleeve?


There is an old thread here that deals with this:

https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...tf-update.html

In that thread, the previous owner of my '87 (Heinrich) claimed to simply push in the rod and it all worked out... I'm not sure what he did but it is definitely not working that way for me.

Mrmerlin

order a new slave flex line from Greg Brown, then the slave will fall out of the mounting,
and its easy to bleed.
in the pictures its the gray heat sleeved line it loops around the front of the starter

in the mean time bend the hard line a little bit and the slave should come out ,

dont pull the pushrod out of the slave as other damage can occur

linderpat

Calling Rick! (Wyattsride). He just went thru this exact same thing on his 85

WyattsRide

I agree with Stan on Greg's flexible line. It would make removing the slave and bleeding the clutch so much easier. But, sometimes you have to deal with what you have.

Like you, I didn't have enough clearance to remove the slave and rod together from the bell housing. On advise from some, I pulled the rod from the slave. I did no damage to the slave or the internal rubber diaphragm. On reinstall, make sure the rod is seated into the operating lever correctly. (You can be sure by looking up through the access port)

Bleeding from the slave bleed valve by pumping the clutch pedal worked for me. Also what may have worked was pumping the rod into the slave while the bleed valve was opened.

jcorenman

Scott, If I recall correctly I had to drop the starter to get the slave out without disconnecting the hydraulics. Which of course is a bit of catch-22 because the clutch hardline is in the way of the upper starter bolt. So step-one is what you did, remove the fasteners securing the slave, and also the fasteners for the bracket. Then use a ball-end alen-wrench to get the starter bolts loose.

That was before I swapped to Greg's cosmic clutch hose as Stan suggests above. Highly recommended, but you will have to bleed the hydraulics, so just go ahead and disconnect the hardline from the slave and reassemble with the new hose.

Bleeding also gets much easier, because you can dangle the slave on its now-flexible hose and do the "push rod in and then release slowly" trick a few times to push any air out the top and back to the reservoir.

Here's the routing for our S4:

Mrmerlin

I cant find the picture with the line , thanks for posting Jim

docmirror

Either pull the starter, or at a minimum loosen both starter bolts so it tips down. You can bend the metal clutch line some to remove the slave asm from the flange. The metal clutch line is pretty resilient and it's meant to bend a modest amount. Of course, don't kink it. Alternately, get the flex line and go through the bleed process. Use no metal tools on the hard clutch line, just gently bend it so the slave asm and rod will clear the edge of the hole.

GregBBRD

Not a whole lot of options...which is one of the reasons I made that custom line.

1. Remove bracket and pull rod out of slave. Boot may tear.
2. Remove bracket and move starter (starter will not come out with sway bar attached.)
3. Lower exhaust and remove lower bell housing.

After making and using my own product, which makes the entire job (including bleeding), so simple, I stand under these cars wondering why Porsche did it the way they did....without an answer. After all, there are three or four different iterations of the clutch lines....it's not like they did it once and forgot about it! They used a rubber connection hose....why not just make the rubber hose longer and route it in front of the starter, like I did?

docmirror

$$$$$$ Will usually be a primary answer. From an engineering standpoint, one typically avoids flex lines in hydraulic system where a solid line will do. Lotus learned the hard way when they decided to use flex lines for the clutch on the Esprit. Nearly 100% failure rate, leading to a lot of clutch jobs, and some broken trans gears, as well as high synchro failure rate. But - they didn't use a quality($$$$) flex line there either. Pay now, or pay later.

syoo8

Wow-- I got Jim's, Stan's, Doc's, and Greg's expertise in one thread. I am a lucky man!!!

What I ended up doing was bending the hard line. (Roger Tyson suggested this.) This gave me the clearance I needed to pull out the clutch slave.

I am going to be purchasing Greg Brown's custom line soon!

Thank you all for your help.

GregBBRD

Agreed that must have been the train of thought.

Of course, they were already using a rubber flex hose in the highest heat area. Doubtfully, another foot of hose in a cooler environment would not have taken much away from the reliability.

docmirror

Nice dis.

cya

syoo8

Fixed!

mkriete

This sounds like a lot more fun than 10 hours of flight delays...though I did just finish a pint.

granprixweiss928

I loosen the 6 bolts on the lower bell housing to lower the starter and the clutch slave. The bellhousing cover will hang down a little, this gives some space above the starter and the bottom of the oil pan, which then allows you to slide the slave and its hard line over the starter rearward as you remove the slave from the mounting.

when I do clutch stuff I remove the exhaust Y-pipe with cat, and then drop the lower cover with starter and slave still attached.