Getting clutch slave cylinder bracket off painlessly...

[IdahoDoug]

Wow. Just wow. Those who have delved into this thing know what I speak of when I express disbelief at how VW put that rearward bolt into a deep steel recess, then blocked the only access with the slave cylinder's boot.

I was able to get it in the following way. It has been hit for a couple days with PB Blaster.

Take a 13mm open end wrench and push it up past the boot (pressing the boot out of the way) and place it such that it simply restricts the bolt from turning. It's not ON the bolt, in fact it's actually just the tips of the wrench that are sitting on the bolt head as if you were trying to spear it and both tips missed. But it will trap it if you can hold the wrench firmly enough. Which brings me to trick #2. Hold the wrench in position and use a long nosed vice grip to smash it up against the cast iron clutch lever. You have to push the wrench as hard as you can against the bolt head and hold it at an angle such that both tips are touching down next to the bolt's head so both are trapping the bolt head. Once the vice grips are in place the sucky part's over.

Now take a 13mm Gear Wrench, get it on the bolt on top of the bracket and once you break it loose it is what these wrenches are best at - one click at a time and you're loosening the nut. Seems to take forever, but compared to some of the things I read people do (cut off the clutch lever and replace it when the tranny's out, destroy the bracket, etc), this is now a "lay on your back and deal with the tediousness" exercise.

Wow. That really, truly sucked. Hope it helps someone else. I'm pulling my tranny, so this was a show-stopper for a half hour of head scratching.

DougM

[Titus A Duxass]

I found an easier solution to this - I took it to the VW workshop.

[IdahoDoug]

Cheater! I still have a check in my checkbook that I did NOT write to someone else. I'll be writing that out for snappy new gearbox parts instead...

DougM

[syncroandy]

Truly one of those annoying tasks, but fortunately one of very few where VW got it completely wrong. Next step should be to find a nice fresh 10.9 grade M8 screw and weld it thread-up into the bracket.

[DentedDevon]

Pull the boot off the cylinder. Hold the cluch arm down. Push the rod up and disengage from the arm. Now you can remove the rod and boot , access is much better. (Piston is retained with a circlip so wont come out )

[IdahoDoug]

Thanks, Richard.

So my boot is still in place and the bracket is separated so I can pull the tranny, but a question. When I disengaged the slave cylinder by pushing it up out of the bracket, and the tip with the hole in it came off the cast arm, it seemed like the piston came out of the cylinder? I can feel that the metal tip is unsupported and the boot has a lot of brake fluid in it. Is that fixable by just pushing the piston back in, or is the slave cylinder toast? Thanks.

Doug

[DentedDevon]

Add a new slave cylinder to your shopping list , and an easy bleed kit !

[silverbullet]

Once it's off, you can do a mod like this:

https://club8090.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=80607" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One good thing about a Subaru conversion - you can change the slave accessing completely from topside (stay clean and dry), all bled and working in about 40 mins!