SACO Hydraulic Clutch Woes

[Stripped66]

I know there are other folks in this forum who've been running this SACO hydraulic clutch:

Mine worked great for about 6 months after I originally installed it. After an engine rebuild 18 months ago, it has never worked the same. Spent lots of time adjusting the slave cylinder, bleeding the system, adjusting the pushrod and eventually using a longer pushrod. After every "fix" the time is remains operable becomes less and less.

So, after tinkering with the system recently, I found a lot of metal in the hydraulic fluid. Not thinking too clearly, I bought a rebuild kit (basically, new piston, seal, spring, etc), but I question whether this will be of any value if the bore of the MC is worn. The MC is aluminum, it is not anodized, and I'm now thinking that the rebuild will pointless.

Can anybody else share their experience with this MC, longevity, rebuilding or otherwise? I know a few folks here never got their system to work properly after install, so I'm not looking for those comments.

I'm considering boring out the MC, pressing in a steel sleeve, and honing the bore; then use the piston/seal/hardware from my rebuild kit. This might be more work than it's worth, but it would allow me to bolt the MC back into the tunnel.

Alternatively, I'm considering using a completely different MC, like CNC's 711-series steel MCs:

This would be very simple to adapt to my current MC bracket to mount within the tunnel, and probably be quicker and easier than inserting a steel sleeve into my existing MC as mentioned above.

So, any thoughts? Any experience performing similar modifications? Thanks in advance!
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[Stripped66]

The rebuild kit arrived yesterday, and it's contents were a bit different than the parts that came out of the master cylinder:

In particular, the part at the far right is originally a seat for the spring; the replacement part has a seal around it and a check valve(?)...the original is just metal, no seal, no valve. The rubber seal shown between the spring and piston also was not originally present in my master cylinder I suppose it's a wonder the MC ever worked at all It appears that the original set-up allowed fluid to bleed back through the piston and into the reservoir when under pressure. Why this wasn't an issue after I installed the kit, I don't know (maybe that seal was present, in some form or another, and disintegrated over time?).

Anyway, this might be a good thing to check for anybody who's recently purchased a SACO hydraulic clutch kit. Check to see if all of the parts that *should* be there are, in fact, there.
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