Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Clutch Repair: Round 1

A few days ago, the new clutch slave cylinder and braided stainless clutch line arrived. I asked Mr. Kimmelshue if he'd help me install them, and he said yes. I ran over to BAP Geon for some extremely over-priced ATE SuperBlue brake fluid, and got home yesterday with daylight left in the sky.

The project didn't seem too ambitious at first: remove the front passenger wheel, remove the slave cylinder, remove the soft line, and put in the new parts. No big deal.

Except that this car is 13 years old and spent its whole life in New Jersey. Yeah, it was a big deal. First we couldn't get access to any of the nuts for the clutch hard-lines, then we started to round them off where we could reach them.

I ran out for a 10mm flare wrench while Mr. K got the slave cylinder loose (plenty of space to reach it, but no room for a wrench). Eventually the hard line was so fouled that we decided to pull it and replace it, too. That meant the job would take several days of waiting for more parts, but there's a bonus: once I get the new hard line, I can assemble it, the stainless line, and the slave cylinder as one unit, install it, and fill it with fluid. Easy!

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