Clutch hydraulic pipe

[The Hatter]

What clutch hydraulic lines do people have? I seem to have a rubber/metal braided pipe on the stainless SEAC and a master cylinder with a 7/16 thread for which I can't find a replacement. There's a banjo fitting on the master cylinder (pic taken before dismantling it...):



and then a screw in adapter on the slave (which incidentally was wrapped in heat resistant tape):



My 350i is a normal copper brake pipe thing.

Anyone else have this braided hose arrangement and know where to get the pipe and cylinders to match? It would also be interesting to know why this car is different to normal (assuming the braided hose is not also normal!); I wonder what would be the advantage of a braided hose?

Edited by The Hatter on Saturday 24th September 22:57

[Campbell]

Just got good old copper on my SEAC but I changed the slave cylinder which had a different thread so I had to get a converter to fit it up to the oridunal pipe work.

[TVRleigh_BBWR]

I'm sure all the road, cars had a copper pipe, but all the racers had them changed for braided alone with the brake ones. I'm sure the cylinders are the same though

[The Hatter]

I've found a braided clutch pipe for the SD1 V8 on the rimmers website so I might go for that; looks like it is interchangable with the original.

I'm bewildered by the choices of masters and especially slave cylinders on the Rimmers site and others; there's lots of different part numbers that seem to do the same RV8 job. There's a comment on one of the TVR specialist websites that the TVR slave cylinder is a unique (larger) diameter - anyone know if that's true and if there's an alternative source for the TVR part?

At this rate I'll just go for a set of SD1 bits and then hopefully it'll all fit together and work!

[GV]

I've got a s/s braided hose line for my clutch & brakes. The clutch hose is easy to make up once you know the hose and connector sizes...

[Wedg1e]

The Hatter said:

There's a comment on one of the TVR specialist websites that the TVR slave cylinder is a unique (larger) diameter - anyone know if that's true and if there's an alternative source for the TVR part?

It would seem unlikely for it to be a non-standard cylinder, TVR didn't spend money if they didn't need to. Lucas-Girling parts tend to have a casting number on them and often another number (like say 70) indicating the bore size. I once rummaged through the cross-reference catalogue at my local Lucas-Girling agents and it came up with the clutch master as being from the Lotus Cortina (but no other variant) and IIRC the Triumph TR6. I imagine the only reason for not using a standard Rover V8 slave would be that the Lotus/TR master didn't shift as much fluid as the standard SD1 (or RangeRover) variant (or conversely that it shifted too much!) but I'd expect that having each slave cylinder made (or machined) to a larger bore would have been a last resort, finding a matched pair would have been an easier/ cheaper solution.

[carsy]

When my slave cylinder needed looking at, although its a 92 Griff, i read the posts about TVR using a wider bore etc. but decided to have a gamble on a new one on ebay listed for a Defender RV8. Price £12. When it came i took it apart along with the old one and the bores were exactly the same size. Maybe i was just lucky but i find it hard to believe that TVR would machine every slave cylinder. The only difference in the new one was that the thread for the clutch pipe was different so i had to make up a new pipe.

[TVRleigh_BBWR]

carsy said:

When my slave cylinder needed looking at, although its a 92 Griff, i read the posts about TVR using a wider bore etc. but decided to have a gamble on a new one on ebay listed for a Defender RV8. Price £12. When it came i took it apart along with the old one and the bores were exactly the same size. Maybe i was just lucky but i find it hard to believe that TVR would machine every slave cylinder. The only difference in the new one was that the thread for the clutch pipe was different so i had to make up a new pipe.

I used a LR one also, on the racer and it worked fine, even the thread was the same.

[wild rover]

Replaced mine with a land rover defender master cylinder about £12.Works fine.

[The Hatter]

I've formulated a plan. My slave is 1" diameter and Rimmers list a 1" slave for the Defender 90/110 so I'll have that. The master on my car is 0.70" and the Triumph TR6 is also 0.70"; however the Defender 90/110 is 0.75" and is much cheaper... so I'm going to try that and see what the clutch pedal force is like; using the pressure=force/area numbercrunching the force should be 10% higher so I'll see what it's like when I fit it.

Merlin motoersport and Burton power do various diameters of masters so after a bit of experimentation I hope to get it right... in the Autocar of May '87 when Trevor Wilkinson drove a SEAC and my car is pictured (though it's not clear he's talking about my car) he commented that the clutch was unbearably heavy so I may have to try some other diameters to make it pleasant to drive.

For the hose I'm going to go with the Goodrich braided route with hose and fittings from Merlin; it appears you can make clutch hoses up yourself.

[wild rover]

I use the set up on my 390se and it works well.Maybe i just have a heavy foot.
DLRS Land Rover are good to deal with, so is Paddock Spares