As many folks already know, the clutch master / slave cylinders used in
the '97 Chev. K3500 and presumably other related models are essentially
a defective design. The normal failure mode is a failure to release the
clutch, the clutch itself doesn't seem to have any issues.

As the clutch master and slave cylinders have been replaced on my truck
a couple times with OEM parts, and now they are showing signs of failing
once again, does anyone know of good non OEM replacement components to
use?

I'll be doing this next repair myself, and given that I have a fairly
complete machine shop, I have no problem using completely different
parts, even say Ford 350 series parts, and fabricating the appropriate
adapters needed.

Thanks,

Pete C.

Pete C. wrote:
Yeah the slave cylinder on these trucks suck. I've a '97 K2500 w/6.5TD
and the NV4500 trans. I've gone thru quite a few slave cylinders. The
master is fine. It just blows because you have to drop the transmission
out to get at the slave clylinder. With all that work, I usally just
throw the extra $250 at it for the clutch too so I don't have to worry.
At 87kmi, I replaced with OEM (I didn't reaplce the clutch this first
time). At 125kmi, the clutch blew, so I replaced the slave and clutch,
again the slave was OEM.
At 174kmi, the slave blew, I replaced with a LUK. At 245k, the
transmission blew up, I rebuilt it myself, and put another new LUK slave
clylinder in. We'll see how it hold's up, it's got 8kmi on it now.

yoyoma wrote:
Replaced POS MC this afternoon with another POS MC since I had to
replace it before I had time to find a better part.

Now I'm really pissed off. I replaced the MC and things seemed to be
ok for 30 min or so, then the problem returned, actually worse. WTF?