thread: How to: Braided hose and remote bleed upgrade for your clutch slave cylinder.

  1. #1

    Sep 2011
    LTU
    31

    How to: Braided hose and remote bleed upgrade for your clutch slave cylinder.

    I did this "mod" as a necessity because i had broken off the end of my clutch main hard line when taking off my gearbox (i might do another thread on how to fix up your steel hard line without a heavy duty flaring device).
    But if i were to do a swap now, this would be one of the first things to do - makes packaging and access to components better, gives you options to route other stuff - like coolant lines, throttle cables etc.


    So I'm pretty sure we all "love" this awkward contraption of clutch cylinder line connector and bleed port and how it gets in the way of the gearbox bolts.


    You can easily ditch whatever that thing is and replace it with some nice braided hoses.

    For this job you need to be handy with an angle grinder or an equivalent metal cutting tool.
    Below is a list of stuff you will need, most of it is best acquired at a hydraulics specialist, really helps having a friendly shop like this around.

    So the stuff you will need:
    1. Two braided hoses made up to your required lengths (refer to step one lower down the thread).


    2. Two 90deg bends from a 6mm copper line (best option - have these made at the same place you get the hose from) - one end needs to screw into the clutch cylinder (should be M8x1pitch screw) and the other one has to be compatible with your hose. only have a pic of these mounted already.


    3.An adaptor to connect your braided line to the original hard line. I believe the connector is M12x1pitch, but its best to just bring your original rubber hose to a hydraulics shop and just say that your new posh braided hose has to have the same type connector at one end (they will probably just make an adapter for that).

    4. An adapter for your bleed line - from whatever your hose end is to a M8x1pitch port, same one as the 90deg bends. Mine was made up of a tiny bit of a hard copper line. Here's how mine looks all assembled.


    5. A brass automotive brake line joint/connector. Make sure the "cone" (have no idea how to name this, if someone could correct, would be nice :) ) goes inwards so that the bleed screw seals properly, check picture.

    6. A bleed screw of course, if your old one is in good nick just reuse it.

    7. Fresh brake fluid to refill your clutch system, i prefer high quality dot5.1 fluid, but a regular dot3 or 4 will do the job equally well.

    So lets begin:
    1. First jack up the car, secure it, crawl underneath (envy-hate people that have shop lifts available :icon_razz:) plan your hose routing and measure required lengths, factor in the length and amount of adapter you will need, and the position of your 90deg bends, strongly recommend finding a nice spot for your bleed nipple, i did not do that and ended up with mine just handing above the oil filter (pic below). Alternatively you can be like me(=stupid) - take apart, cut/destroy everything first and then try to figure out how are you going to get out of this mess, not recommended.

    2. Disassemble:
    a. Remove the front torque mount and the bracket on the gearbox as well,
    b. Disconnect the rubber clutch hose, brake fluid will be dripping for a while, so be prepared for that.
    c. Disconnect the shifter cables and remove them from their brackets.
    d. Remove the thing together with the clutch slave cilinder - there are two bolts you will need to reach from the top, depending on your packaging you might need to remove the air filter and hose, removing the starter motor gives better access.

    3. Cut up the thing (for that i used an angle grinder with a thin cutting disk), you have to save the shifter cable brackets, 2 mounting holes and a separate piece to use a spacer for your tranny mount. Thats what I ended up with:



    4. We are now ready to put everything back together:
    a. NOTE FIRST. Your slave cylinder has two ports - they can be interchanged and each one can be used either for the bleed line or the feed line, so don't worry about that.
    a. I strongly recommend to first screw on and fully tighten the 90deg bends both to the clutch cylinder and the braided lines. It is also a good time to assemble the bleed end of one of the line, refer to a picture in the first part of the post. Might cause a minor struggle to force the whole thing into place, but trust me tightening them when the cylinder is in place is no joy at all. For that of course you need to know in advance where you want your hoses pointed (again referring back to step 1, I should have already learned the lesson by now :D)
    b. Put on the slave cylinder on and lightly tighten with one bolt, make sure you can still move the cylinder side to side
    c. Put on the gutted shifter cable bracket, still keep the bolts loose enough to give you some movement.
    d. Put on the gearbox torque mount bracket, and now tighten all the bolts up to spec.
    e. Put on the torque mount.
    f. Connect your posh new braided line to the stock hard line.
    g. Add some fresh brake fluid and bleed your clutch. Ask a friend to help if you do not have access to a vacuum bleeder.



    5. Be proud and enjoy you new mod. Look down on the less fortunet ones running lame rubber lines :D.

  2. #2
    cdwood2010's Avatar
    Sep 2010
    Earls Barton
    6,003
    Nice mod. Really like this.

    :)

    Chris.

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