Slave Cylinder repair?

[hondakillah]

My sister is one of the very lucky people to have purchased a 2002 4 door Exploder with the M5R4 transmission - 1 in 1000 made.

I've gotten the clutch resurfaced and now I need to make sure the slave cylinder is reliable enough to put back into the truck.


Is there a way I can rebuild the cylinder myself? Maybe a company I could look up to get them to rebuild it? I don't feel like buying one of the remaining ones on the market for $300.

 

[Maniak]

I can't even fathom how you could rebuild it yourself... Of course, if they sold a rebuild "kit" that would be different but from my cursory search, I don't see anything like that.

and, as for having someone else rebuild it.. It may cost as much or more than the new ones.. For example.. I need a steering box for my '78 van.. that box was used for 2 years.. A new one (complete) was $200.. I called around about getting it rebuilt and the prices started at $300 and went up....

Unfortunately I don't have much knowledge on that generation explorer so I don't know if you can somehow swap things to make it cheaper in the long run.. of course, that is assuming you are going to keep it that long...

personally, I'd bite the bullet and get the $300 slave... BUT, if you don't mind having to pull the trans out again to swap it then you can save some money now but in my experience on the ford transmissions (m50d and t5 in the s197 mustang) is that you need to swap the slave out as they never seem to last long after doing the clutch..

~Mark

 

[hondakillah]

I found someone who'll rebuild it for upwards of $250, so after shipping, it'll be just a bit cheaper than the $300 one with shipping.

It uses the same hydraulic system as 05-14 Mustangs, and I got a hold of one of those in the hopes that I could find a way to modify it. But that wasn't going to happen.

And as far as the slaves going out shortly after the clutch goes... All too true. I had a racing clutch in my own explorer, and since that burned away fast, I figured I could get away with holding off on the slave... Less than a year later, it's going out. Shoulda done it when I had it out. It'll be easy enough, I just don't want to do it yet. Haha

 

[RangerX]

I found someone who'll rebuild it for upwards of $250, so after shipping, it'll be just a bit cheaper than the $300 one with shipping.
Does the rebuilder make it better than stock in any way? Will it be beefed up somehow? Or just returned to a stock condition?

 

[hondakillah]

It'll be same as stock. I just need the thing to work effectively and efficiently instead of worrying about having to drop the transmission again to fix it.

 

[rb142]

At $250 for a rebuild or $300 for new, I'd go with the new one in a heartbeat...

You said you resurfaced the flywheel. You may need to shim the flywheel out by the amount removed in order to avoid clutch release issues. That has happened for some people, depending on how much was removed. You can buy the shims from places like Rockauto.

 

[Maniak]

I learned this the hard way on our Mustang which is "similar" to the explorer setup... It just never worked quite right.. I didn't learn about the shims until about 6 months later and by then I wasn't going to pull the trans out to fix it..

I fixed it by buying an entire LUK clutch kit which included a flywheel the next time we needed anything (had a slave leak)..

~Mark

 

[hondakillah]

I learned this the hard way on our Mustang which is "similar" to the explorer setup... It just never worked quite right.. I didn't learn about the shims until about 6 months later and by then I wasn't going to pull the trans out to fix it..

I fixed it by buying an entire LUK clutch kit which included a flywheel the next time we needed anything (had a slave leak)..

~Mark

I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks for the help.

 

[hondakillah]

I'd like to finalize this post for everyone else:

At the time of this posting, there is only one company that makes the slave cylinder for these transmissions. Southland Clutch in CA (http://www.southlandclutch.com/). and since they have you by the balls, they get to charge $300.

The style of slave cylinder is not able to be taken apart and rebuilt. It's all machined.

Sorry for the bad news. But, again, you have a chance to fix it.

Also, if you're doing this, it's almost just as expensive to go ahead and buy their kit to swap from a dual mass flywheel (DMF) to a single mass flywheel. Something that will last you longer, because you won't have to worry about internal springs breaking on you. I opted for a new DMF to keep things a little bit simpler for me.

The flywheel is a self adjusting type - it keeps optimal pressure on the clutch plate for longer and smoother operation of the disc. So, you'll have to build a tool to reset the adjusting springs, or spend some pretty coin on a fancy tool to reset it.

The picture is mine. This is the video I got the design for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfyapBj-aTQ
I built the tool for about $20 of materials i had laying around.

If you've come across this for information, I'm sorry for your troubles, but hopefully this helps you out.