Slave cylinder carnage

[gonzalaga1]

Well here's a pic of my destroyed slave cylinder and bent slave rod.

The pedal went to the floor when this happened, wouldn't go back in gear etc. Had to put it in gear and bump start to limp home...

Obviously the slave cylinder self-destructing was the cause of that, but what caused the slave to do this? I'm hoping I'm not in for a new $500 clutch, pressure plate, flywheel and fork...

Clutch is ACT 2600 setup, slave cylinder had about 15k miles on it, rod was extended SBR slave rod. I never drop the clutch, car was abused by PO, but is not by me (have owned and driven it daily for over yr).

Any ideas?

 

[my dreamt dsm]

Im not sure but wow! First time I've seen this!

 

[GooeyGus]

It looks almost like the slave over-extended.

I've had one do something similar to this when I hit the clutch pedal when the slave was connected but not installed.

The weird thing is that it looks like your clutch fork is in the position where it should be disengaging the clutch.

I'm thinking your fork may have bent.

The only other way to have the fork in that position, and the clutch not be disengaged, would be if the throwout bearing just disappeared.

 

[gonzalaga1]

Yeah, I noticed the fork position too, and thought the worst. But the fact that the slave rod actually bent says to me that something in there made it bind. The more I think about, the more expensive this is getting...

Actually, last weekend I adjusted the master cylinder rod to get the clutch to release a little higher, so the theory that the salve rod was over extended could be correct. In addition to that, the info from RRE and Jack's states that extended rods can cause failure of the throwout bearing due to increased pressure.

Is it possible I created a perfect storm, bent the rod and disintegrated the throwout bearing all in one shot?

 

[gonzalaga1]

Well, removed the slave cylinder. No damage to the bore so i'll probably rebuild it. Bad news is that the clutch fork snapped right in two. Has anyone ever seen this happen before? Is the cause just fatigue?

It doesn't appear that the pressure plate, clutch of flywheel was damaged, so that's a sigh of relief. I won't really know until I get in there.

You must be logged in to view this image or video.

You must be logged in to view this image or video.

 

[supravw]

I'd pull of the tranny to see what caused the stress to be put on your fork and slave like that. That's not normal wear and tear, something caused it to break like that.

 

[Rob10_99]

Your going to have to pull the trans back a bit to put a new fork in, I've done it with just enough room to slide the fork in.
Those things are cast iron, which can be easily broken if there's a crack in it. Just like an engine block, the crack only gets bigger.
Does it have any wear marks like it hit the pressure plate? Doesn't look like there is any rust on the break which would indicate it was going on for a while, but that thing is under some heavy load, so I doubt it would last even with a small surface crack.

 

[GooeyGus]

I bet it broke due to the combined pressure of the longer slave arm, as well as an aftermarket pressure plate. Which pressure plate are you using?

 

[gonzalaga1]

Well I think at this point I'll have to pull the whole trans to make sure the throwout bearing is still intact, and nothing else broke in there. Will probably shim the input shaft too, as the 2600 was grabbing really low at max adjustment.

And Gus, you're probably right - I'm using the 2600 and the PO stuck the extended rod in there because he probably didn't think to shim the thing after he got the flywheels resurfaced.

I'll update with more pics when I crack it open.

 

[arbiter]

I had a similar carnage, but mine has caused damage to the support of the slave cilinder.

Is your slave a FWD on an AWD, or a real AWD?
Is your slave having it's little restrictor inside or not?
Are you using a pulley without damper? (alu billet or anything alike)