Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Clutch does not reply II

Ok, I have changed the clutch master cylinder but it still not working. So, I think it is time to change the slave cylinder in my Saab. To make my life easier, I broke down and bought the Saab special tool to hold the clutch fingers in place. Let me explain the tool by first explaining how the clutch is operated. If you look at the slave cylinder (green in the picture below) and pressure plate, you will see the slave cylinder disengages the clutch plate by pressing on the fingers (pink) on the pressure plate. On the top of each finger, on the outside, is a tab (blue) that probably is there so the fingers will not overextend.
Now, let's go back to the tool. It looks like a loop where one of the ends is turned perpendicular to the plane of the loop into a tab. It works by slipping between the fingers and the tab so that it keeps the fingers pressed and away from the slave cylinder.

Now that we know how the tool work, let's see if we can get it in place. At first I thought all I had to do was to line it up with the tabs and then press the clutch, but that did not do much; it felt like the slave cylinder would extend almost far enough to put the tool in place. But not just enough. So, time to unleash heavy weapondry.
In this case, the weapon of choice is an adjustable wrench. An orange one at that. And, it is the one that comes in the Saab tool kit. What I used it for is to gently persuade the tool to slide into place. It did the job rather nicely but it took a bit of time. I started at the end of the loop that did not have the tab and then pressed the exposed session of the clutch tool between two pressure plate tabs. After that I turned the flywheel, using a screwdriver, a bit so the next exposed tool session was lined up with where I could use wrench comfortably. And so it went.
That was not very fast but it had to be done. And, after turning the flywheel all the way around, I finally reached the end of the clutch tool with the tab. By then the tool was completely placed between the pressure plate's tabs and fingers.
Now we have some room!
In the next episode we will see about removing the slave cylinder.

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