I'm just thinking out loud here, So I need to bounce this off the folks who've had the bike apart. I've not seen this part..Yet !

Paging David Shealey

I just was thinking that some may be fearfull of drilling a hole in the flange and having it come out in the wrong place.

What if you used a cutoff tool and just cut a groove in the bottom of the flange into the area where it would drain....It would seem to me that this would work as well as drilling a hole and possibly safer than screwing up and drilling too deep or too shallow..

Is this a plausible idea ???

Input needed....This is on my list this month while Lola is down for maintenance.


Thanks

John

As someone who has done this a few times, your suggestion might work, but when you get to take it all apart, and you pull the cylinder out you will see it is probably easier to just drill a hole ,you can see where you need to go and where the drill bit will come out. A whole lot less work than trying to cut a flange out.

I agree with Mike. A face slot would work, but once you get the slave out, it's pretty easy to see what's going on. And BMW even calls for a gasket there, just to be sure none of the leaking fluid escapes to a safe place.

The discussion we had at a recent tech session focused more on the possibility of drilling the weep hole without removing the slave cylinder. That may be possible for newer bikes, but once you get over 50K miles, you probably want to swap out the slave cylinder anyway.

Thanks Ken, Mike

Just one of those things that goes flying through my mind....

Bike had a new clutch at 32K so I'm hoping the slave was changed at that time..
Don't know where the work was done so I can't go back and check up on it..

That area of the bike is pretty greasy, But right now I'm thinking it's shock oil..

Bout the only thing up there that could get the back of the slave cyl area greasy..


Wish I had the bucks for new shocks while I got her apart...

Oh well, next year will come around..

Thanks again

John

Drilling the drain hole is still probably the best way to go. The nose of the cylinder is not tight in the bore of the tranny housing, but there is not a lot of space around it. I would want the drain path to be as close to the nose of the cylinder as I can get it. If the leak is slow, then just cutting out the lower portion of the gasket to allow it to drain out between the cylinder flange and tranny boss would likely work. However, if the slave fails pretty drastically, as many do, the flow of fluid may overwhelm a small or tortuous drain path and still be forced forward to the clutch.

Think stresses too. Nice round holes pass stress around them.

Straight lines tend to cause stress points and can lead to cracks.

Cutting a slot:
1 - you're breaking the circle (mounting face). Mount is now weaker. (ok, not much, but it's there)
2 - you're weakening the cylinder. Continuing the 'breaking of the circle' down the length of the cylinder. Of course, further you go, worse it'll be.
3 - you're introducing stress points (at least at the end of the slot) that may lead to more failures.

At best, it'd work
Maybe it'll just distort the cylinder over time
at worst - maybe it'd lead to splitting the cylinder altogether (ok, that's a bit of a reach - but the theory is there)

From that viewpoint alone - let alone the muss and bother of getting there to do it. Drilling a small, round, weep hole away from the mounting flange (body of cylinder) seems like a MUCH better idea all around.