NJ Steves Pit Viper Revival

[njsteve]

The new clutch cylinder arrived yesterday from rockauto and I installed it today with a little help from the wife sitting in the driver's seat after she got home from work. YAY! That was the problem. So now I can return the throwout bearing slave assembly to amazon when it arrives.

And if you're wondering what that little plastic bottle zip-tied to the footwell-box near the clutch cylinder is, it's a homemade catch can for the power steering pump vent. Dodge in their infinite wisdom had a cap on top of the power steering pump that had a vented nipple pointing straight up. This made for interesting times when the car was driven in anger and the power steering fluid heated up, which then would geyser upwards and then onto the headers and left front brake assembly. So I just attached a length of fuel line and routed it to that catch can. Problem solved!

[njsteve]

Oh well, so much for hoping the leak was that simple...I checked under the car today and there's a puddle of fresh brake fluid under the bellhousing leaking from the throwout bearing slave cylinder.

DOH! and I yesterday I cancelled the shipment from Amazon before arrival and now Amazon shows none available. Same with all the local parts stores.

I just spent several hours hunting down another one (LUK LSC134) slave/bearing assembly. Found it on ebay.

You can find the slave cylinder without the bearing at Rockauto but the Vipers are very finicky about the bearing installed heaight so the factory demands you install a preassembled bearing and slave assembly. Oh and did I mention the NOS Mopar bearing assembly is $390? No thanks, I'll use the LUK version which is the one the factory used anyway.

So the wait for arrival starts again.

I'll start pulling the trans out tomorrow. It least I dont have to totally remove it, I can pull it back and let it sit on the trans jack and then remove the bearing/slave assembly.

[njsteve]

Got the transmission "detached." I won't say removed because I just pulled it back far enough to get the slave cylinder and throwout bearing off the input shaft. This way the transmission is still in an aerial holding pattern that is a straight forward shot into the bellhousing.

Of course my 15 year old Harbor Freight transmission jack failed as I was about to attempt the uncoupling. Luckily the floor jack was still under the engine and was holding the entire drivetrain up at the time. I remembered it failed before when I was pulling the transmission out of Grampa's Lincoln three years ago so it was about time to run back to HF to get another one. Luckily they had it in stock with a 10% off coupon today. Too bad they dont just sell a new cylinder for these damn things.

Anyway, you can see that the slave cylinder did in fact fail which seems to be a common occurence on Vipers from what I have seen while googling the interwebs.

I figure that in 28 years of ownership (which includes 8,000 hard miles in the first 5 years and then over two decades of sitting idle), this is the first actual drivetrain component to fail. The only other parts that have gone bad are one wiper motor two years ago and the grey flocked, fuzzy dash finish that decomposes on all Gen 1 Vipers.

I used several bottles of brake clean so far to flush and wipe away the residue inside the bellhousing area. I never had a problem with the clutch and it appears that all the leakage was travelling toward the transmission and away from the clutchplate itself. When I closely examined the interior of the clutch plate it was dry and surface rusty looking with no evidence that the fluid got between the disc and the plate. I don't want to replace the clutch assembly since that's another item that the aftermarket does not seem to get right (from other googling research) with the majority of the clutch kits mistakenly including a C5 Corvette disc instead of the 24 spline Viper disc. And when they get the disc right they get the installed height wrong. One guy had to pull his transmission 4 times to get the clutch working properly and in the end gave up and used his original clutch plate and disc.