Master cylinder and pedal shaft - easy removal!

[rayofleamington]

1) A tip I read on here was how to get the Master Cylinder mounting bolts out. They were installed 'captive' so the torsion bar gotr in the way of them coming out.
The tip is to use a piece of wood under the car and a crowbar on it to lever the torsion bar down, allowing the bolt to slide past it!
I thought it sounded awful, but when I needed to do the job I tried it and it's great. It was easy enough that I re-fitted the new bolts the same way.
If you do it the hard way and cut the bolts up to get them out and then re-fit new ones the wrong way round, the nuts may wear a groove into the torsion bar and that is far worse than anything you would do with the crowbar. Plus if you fit them the wrong way - do you really remember to drill & pin the end / loctite them to make sure they never fall out? Even less safe if you don't!

2) removing pedal shaft. The spacer next to the brake pedal is 95% likely to be rusted solid onto the pedal shaft. No amount of hammering etc.. is likely to shift it and you are likely to damage the chassis leg and/or the shaft.
The 'easy' way is to weld a big blob on the front of the spacer - requires 10 seconds with a Mig welder. Cover the area in WD40, and have a cup of tea ;-)
Then fit a big pair of mole grips on the spacer (with an extension tube on them to make them as long as the clutch pedal). Turn the spacer on the shaft, holding the clutch pedal (or vice/versa), which will be very stiff at first and add lots more WD40. Eventually after lots of turning the spacer will be free and the clutch pedal will come out whilst you are rotating the spacer/clutch pedal.
If you don't have the MIG welder you could drill the spacer and fit a self tapper, but be careful not to screw into the pedal shaft or you will never free it up!

[Cam]

Ray,

Tip 1) works for the majority of Minors, but if you have 100% uprated torsion bars (like me), they don't budge!! So you have to remove them the old fashioned way!!

Tip 2) very good idea, although mine was quite loose (and so was everything else!!).

Did you soak the bushes in oil before fitting? I did just in case but I'm not sure if you have to with the modern replacements.

[rayofleamington]

1) Uprated torsion bars - Yes I expected that would be a problem.

2) hmm - you got me on the bushes.
The shaft was VERY worn, but the bushes seemed to be hardly worn. I have no idea of the logic there. The rust must have acted like a grinding paste, but the bushes were immune to it??? I left the bushes as they were, and welded the shaft up / ground it back. The result was a little crude as I ran out of MIG gas so I never got to fill in the pits, but the shaft was back to its original size rather than looking like something the dog would chase after.
That will do in the short term (and would probably last 10 years now it has some good grease on it), though I'll add a new shaft when I get chance.
Your spacer was free! Mine didn't look like it had been disturbed for 30 years and was stuck the same as the other 2 I've done.

[Cam]

This is what mine looked like:



Both the shaft and bushes were VERY worn. One bush was actually worn through on one side!!

So you built the shaft up with weld? the advantage to that is that MIG is very hard and so will not wear very much. But the pedal shaft does need to be pretty circular, and I know how difficult that is using an angle grinder!!

I would suggest that you get a new shaft ASAP, I don't think that they are very expensive, but you have to grind the clutch pedal off and weld it onto the new shaft (not a problem for your good self!).

[rayofleamington]

Mine was actually marginally worse than that, so it was a lot of guesswork to weld it up.
The spacer was slightly larger diameter than the brake pedal, so that was my 'roughing' gauge for angle grinding. Then I just took the high spots off with a lot of trial and error fits of the brake pedal.
I will do the shaft eventually as the surface was not great for the bushes to run on, and if it is left 10 years they may wear through and damage the bore of the pedal.
I think Bull Motif do a shaft/pedal assembly for not too much money which would remove the need to cut and re-weld the clutch pedal.