I currently have a type 9 behind my Pinto that uses a SAAB 99 (late 80's) concentric slave cylinder. Although this took a few goes to setup correctly it worked great for 4 tarmac rallies.
I recently replaced the clutch with a new Extreme Clutch Race (the old one was an Extreme Clutch Heavy Duty). The design of the fingers is different and required my 10mm spacer to be removed from behind the concentric slave clyinder. The clamping pressure is also up from 650kg to 850kg.
The new clutch worked great during engine run in, a dyno session and during the first 8 stages of my last tarmac rally. After that I started to get fluid leaks. I replaced the brand new slave with another brand new slave (4 hour gearbox removal in a carpark in the dark grrrr) and all appeared fine. After a 3km drive between Parc Ferme and the next stage start it totally failed again through fluid loss. I have not pulled the cylinders apart to see what failed but it can only be the seals really. The first failure I thought might be due to the clutch fluid boiling as I normally use race fluid but had tried to save money this time and used normal fluid. However, the second failure would not have been heat related due to the short distance the car had travelled and I also used full race fluid anyway (the stuff I had always used in the past). Tis a mystery!!
My question is has anybody else had issues using the SAAB slave cylinders? Would the increased clamping pressure have contributed to the failure? Can some concentric cylinders handle greater pressures than others?
I am thinking about converting my setup to a hydraulic setup using a clutch fork and external slave cylinder. Does anybody have any information as to whether that setup is better or worse, stronger or weaker? It will make adjustments easier and avoid the need to remove the gearbox to get to fittings and the slave cylinder. I currently have an alloy RS2000 dual starter position bellhousing that does not have the clutch fork cutout/window and I have the starter on the passenger side.
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