[ZTWsquared]

(09-10-2012, 10:25 PM)GFXjamie Wrote: Well, this weekend I finally got a clutch in the car with the knowledge and work of matt (burnin1). Everything was going wiked, nothing gave him issues and had it almost all wrapped up in 5-6 hours. We went to bleed the clutch and that's where the issue started, we weren't getting fluid to the slave, then we got pedal pressure for all of 2 minutes and then it goes soft... What gives?

After 2 hours of dicking around trying to relieve a possible air lock, we find the new clutch master cylinder I put in 3 months ago was garbage

The rod that attaches to the pedal broke inside the master cylinder, before we even had full pressure. Matt fortunately had a oem ford unit at home so we hauled, got that and proceeded to do a cmc swap out.

In the end, it worked out because luck was on our side for one thing, but the cmc I got was not an oem one off rock auto.

So for those who wonder, especially for things like this, buy oem. It turned a 5-6 hour job into a 12 hour job by time we were driving again

Experience is the best teacher. My own personal rule of thumb is to use OE wherever possible, but especially when significant labour is involved to replace it.

Having said that, OE in this country is uber expensive; too often the only choice we have is super expensive OE stuff vs. only slightly less expensive garbage from CT.

So my advice also is to buy in the US but also plan ahead and have spares on hand. I have a Ford clutch master cylinder in my garage as we speak along with a couple of sets of plugs, various filters, pads and rotors (track usage takes its toll) and all kinds of stuff I bought cheap in the US but wouldn't want to wait for if something broke.