Had a freeloader in for repair today, clutch pedal had dropped to floor. Turned out fault was a split in the hydraulic pipe, all the fluid had gone. Easy methinks, repair pipe, bleed up, happy customer. Or not, landrover have decided in their 'wisdom' to make the clutch hydraulics a sealed unit, with no bleed nipple. I had to throw away a perfectly good master cylinder, and a perfectly good slave cylinder just for the sake of a tiny split in a plastic pipe. I remember when you could get seal kits for cylinders, then they decided that you weren't allowed to put the seals in your self, you have to buy a complete cylinder. Now you aren't even allowed to put the bloody fluid in yourself, you have to buy the whole system ready assembled and bled! How long until you have to throw the whole car away?
Freeloader, stupid design.
Jan 15, 2005
15 Replies
Well with the series I'm slowly doing it in installments.
October was half the chassis...
This week the engines going
:-)
Lee D
A Freelander owner will not know any better anyway
They'll know when they get the invoice.
Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)
Let's say it was a repairable pipe.Think your invoice would almost be as high as the one you got now.Since this complete unit is not very expensive,and otherwise someone had to repair the pipe,two persons for bleeding the system ............. Complete unit can be exchanged in less than a half hour.
Woodstock
Had the pipe been available, I could have changed the pipe in 10 minutes, bled the system in another 10, and not had to charge the customer to replace perfectly serviceable units.
It's also a hell of a waste of good parts. Everything is throwaway these days. Give it 25 years & lets see how many Disco 3's are still knocking about.
Nige
-- Subaru WRX (The Bitch)
Series 3 Landrover 88" (Albert)
"If you tolerate this then your children will be next"
Erm, didn't the OP say that there was no facilty to bleed the system?
So you'd have to find some means of actually doing that last step in your allocated 10 mins. B-)
Over £100 for the part alone to repair a 1/4" long split in a pipe?
Obviously your idea of 'not very expensive' is pretty different to mine!
Set alongside £80/hour main dealer rates for labour, it's all relative...
Of course, we can only speculate about the costs saved in the original manufacture of the vehicle by Land Rover being able fit this as an entire module. They will buy this in from the manufacturer as a 'ready to fit' item and thus save all the costs associated with doing it on the vehicle.
Since this is an item that can fail on Freebies,I've one on stock.Cost me
78.50 euro.Freebie has done 160.000 km's so far,and original unit is still fine. Maybe RHD parts are more expensive than LHD parts ?? :-)))Woodstock
That's about £50 I think, sounds about right, the manufacturers always charge more for parts in the UK.
Could you not, in theory, drill and tap a hole somewhere in the system in a suitable place to fit a bleed nipple?
Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)
In theory if you know the internal construction of the slave, then there is the slight matter of getting fluid in to push the air out or isn't it quite that "sealed for life" and has an open top up reservoir.
Remember that time limit though, 10 mins...
I was the OP, and that's exactly my point, that it is a sealed system, with no way of bleeding it. You would assume that if the pipe was available as a spare, then there would be a bleed nipple somewhere. I had actually done the repair on the pipe, (took less than 10 minutes!) before realising I couldn't bleed the bleeding thing up!
Assemble the unit in a bath full of cluth fluid getting the air out as you go... extreme but it should work. Wonder if it removes limescale...H'mmmm.
Lee D
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