Hey guys, I've come across a really strange issue regarding the Perfection brand replacement slave cylinder for my 1994 Mazda B4000 truck. This slave cylinder brand is shown in this blogspot video: PERFECTION: Removal and Servicing of Clutch Master Cylinder to Slave Cylinder Connections

Anyway, I got extremely frustrated when trying to bleed this slave cylinder. For some reason the slave cylinder doesn't seem to even fill up, and there are constant airbubbles coming out of the bleeder valve. It's like the fluid completely bypasses the slave cylinder piston chamber and comes out of the bleeder valve; when I compressed this slave cylinder by hand while it bled, I didn't feel any fluid resistance at all, nor did any fluid come gushing any faster out of the bleed screw. I've been completely baffled... I took the part I bought back to NAPA for a replacement, and the same issue. What the heck?

My old slave cylinder has a bad seal, but I tested it on my clutch system after being extremely frustrated with the Perfection slave cylinder to see if there might have been a leak someplace else in my system. But the old slave cylinder filled up fine, air bubbles qucikly vanished, and when I squeezed it I could feel it push against the resistance of fluid as opposed to air in the last slave cylinder; fluid came gushing out of the bleeder valve when squeezing it by hand as it should. My dad compressed the clutch pedal while I felt resistance with my hand with the old slave as well; worked fine. With the Perfection slave cylinder, it simply pushed nothing but air it felt like, and it didn't even spit any extra fluid out the bleeder valve.

Something is definitely screwy with the Perfection brand slave cylinder... it's hard to believe that I'd get two defective parts in a row. What are the odds of that?

Has anyone else encountered this problem with this same brand slave cylinder?

This has been one very frustrating week... taken my tranny on and off twice because of this problem.

 

if you have it apart now put the slave in a vise and then bleed it. You will need to open both sides of the fluid lines, 1 to get fluid in 2 to bleed everything. I am sure you realize this but yes this is a PIA to set up.

If you have a mity vac or something place the fluid so it is forced into the lines and you hold the QD open on the other side till you get a good fluid flow. Other than that dont know what to tell ya. Also check your master cyl as they can go bad simultaneously and make you think it is the slave thats bad. It just might be better to R&R the master now that you are working on the system.

 

Replacement of the master cylinder was my first attempt at remedying the problem, but I got the same constant stream of airbubbles. So I finally ended up going with a different brand slave cylinder. I returned the Perfection brand clutch to NAPA, got my money back, and went to Carquest to get some other brand (I forget the name). But the cylinder from Carquest worked just fine; it filled up and ejected the big air airspace and main air bubbles right away. It took a lot of pedal pumping to fully bleed the system, but I eventually got my clutch back after one long week of frustration with the Perfection slave cylinder.

The guy at NAPA said he's never heard of any issues with Perfection's brand of slave cylinders. They must have gotten a bad batch from the factory or something. Lucky me to be the guy getting the statistically faulty parts twice in a row.

In the demonstration video in that link to the weblog I posted, the guy doesn't have to do any fancy reverse bleeding method to fill up the slave cylinder. He just gravity bleeds it, and it works fine. If he had been using either of the last two slave's I got, he would have been seeing a constant stream of bubbles.