Mini Cooper Clutch Slave Cylinder Bleeding Tips

R50 MINI Cooper and R53 MINI Cooper S Clutch Slave Cylinder Replacement www.bmpdesign.com Our project today is going to be replacing the Clutch Slave Cylinder on a MINI Cooper or Cooper S from 2002 to 2006. What you're going to experience if this happens to you, is the clutch petal will typically fall to the floor, you'll have the loss of brake fluid, and there'll be a brake fluid puddle under your vehicle right about here, underneath the car in your garage. So let's get in the shop, and I'll show you how to do the job. So here we are under the driver's side of the vehicle. This is your transmission right here. This is your engine oil pan and right up the front here you'll see your clutch slave cylinder. Clutch slave cylinder is made out of plastic, seems to be a pretty popular material now a days for clutch slave cylinders. And here's the feed line that comes from the clutch master cylinder. Clutch master cylinder compresses the fluid down into the slave cylinder. It is supposed to compress the piston or push the piston outward, force it outward. It in turn moves this lever, which in turn inside the bell housing activates the clutch. Now the down side of a MINI Cooper slave cylinder, when trying to bleed it is, the feed line and the bleeder are very close together. So if you put this assembly together, as you see it, try to bleed the clutch from this bleeder. What's going to happen is the fluid likes to go down the tube, totally bypass the cylinder, and go right out the bleeder. So you can bleed 2 or 3 quarts of oil or brake fluid right out of the system, and find out that you still got air in the system. So later on when we remove this old unit, we're going to put a new unit on, and what we're going to basically have to do is compress this piston all the way down. So we illuminate the air pocket in here, and then bleeding the system will take the remaining small bubbles away out of the system, rather than leaving an air pocket in here. I've done this project before. It will take you an hour-and-a-half if you do it wrong, it will take you just a few minutes if you do it right. Okay, here we are underneath the car, and you can see the slave cylinder has been leaking right through the boot. To remove the slave cylinder what you're going to do, is remove the lower 8 millimeter holding bolt, and the upper one right here. And what you're going to then do, is disconnect the retaining clip that has the quick disconnect to the feed line coming from the clutch master cylinder. So here on the table we've got a new slave cylinder, and here's the tool that we kind of deviced to compress that piston all the way to the back of the slave cylinder. It's basically a piece of 1/8th by 1 inch steel, and we drilled a couple of holes in it, and we put a little washer on here just to keep the piston centered up on it, and we're compressing that piston all the way down and letting the little bolts hold the whole project together like that, with a compressed piston inside. This way once the fluid enters the slave cylinder into the feed line opening right here, the fluid has no choice, but to just fill this little cavity right here, and there's no air pocket trapped in here. So it will be much easier to bleed. Once it's been bled, then all you have to do is release the two bolts, and allow it to expand. It will draw more fluid in from the master cylinder, and then what it will do, is almost need no bleeding at all. The clutch should work fine, when you get inside the car to push on it. For more Tech Tips like this one, visit us online at www.bmpdesign.com