I brought my car in to Honda to have checked out because my clutch wasnt disengaging and the pedal would stay to the floor. After the $90 diagnostic, they say that the slave cylinder went. Previous to taking it in, I replaced the slave cylinder with an Ap1 slave cylinder to get rid of the delay. I've had the new slave cylinder on for about 3000 miles and have done 2 autocrosses.

My question: Has anyone had a slave cylinder fail on them?? What circumstances would cause this part to fail?

 

I can't remember the exact details, but the old slave cylinder needed a small modification (grinding off a piece, I think) to make it fit properly. If you didn't make this modification or did it poorly, then this may have resulted in the failure. Other than this, I have no idea why it would have failed.

 

how does it "fail".... were all the lines secure? bleed off, clutch fluid line.. and did you bleed the lines thoroughly afte switching to the 03 slave?

 

 

Did you replace the line leading to the slave at the same time? The AP1 & AP2 lines have different bends and if you tried to make the AP2 line fit the AP1 slave that may have been the cause but your not very specific about what failed (I'm assuming it was the line fitting at the slave).

 

Thinking back to that slave cylinder modification thread (I think Billman did that thread), if that little piece was not ground off properly, the slave cylinder may not have seated itself flush on the side of the tranny casing. This could have caused the plunger to not push perpendicular on the release fork. At the end of the plunger's travel, it's possible that the end of the plunger slipped off and past the fork end. In this position, the plunger would have jammed itself past the fork and this may be why the pedal stayed on the floor.
(ps. This is purely a guess.)

 

It's a pretty good one cause having done this mod 4-5 times already I can visually see this happening...

 

Thanks for all the replies.

I got the car back today. The cylinder failed because a seal went bad. I'm pretty sure that I dremeled the correct amount off too. I remember posting in one of the threads about how the AP1 slave cylinder felt like it had a shorter engangement point. Maybe this part was faulty to begin with?

So the service advisor informed me that the slave cylinder needs to be replaced and that I should be careful driving it home. Dealer is 35 miles away, and they wanted 100 for the part and another 100 for labor plus taxes and shop fees. This was on top of the 90 they charged for the diagnostic (damnit, should have just driven it home in the first place!!) I told them I'd get the part and do the work.

Driving home, the engagement was super-short. There was no "spring" in the clutch pedal. Getting on the pedal immediately disengaged the clutch.

I'll jack my car up and take a look at it next week. I'll even check to make sure I dremeled enough of that tab off. I know if I didnt do it right, I'd see it pushing against the tranny casing, right? I'd do it this weekend, but I'll be in LA.

 

alternatively, you may not have had the "ball" end seated properly in the housing and had a leakage of fluid causing the pedal to stay to the floor.

I remember when I installed my 03 slave, we didnt get it seated properly and had a hell of a time bleeding the clutch - the pedal had no spring in it - and then when fluid finally reached the slave cylinder it bled through the seal in the housing.

We reinstalled making sure the whole unit was seated properly and no probs so far (touch wood )

 

I thought I was the only one who did this....