Project AMC Eagle wrap-up: "Universal" was an exact fit; I sold it anyway

This AMC Eagle’s unobtainable clutch master cylinder has plagued me since I bought the project two years ago. After enough screwing around with rebuild kits and new hoses, I finally capitulated and followed the advice of a LeMons racer I met last year: It’s a simple hydraulic system. Just adapt a Tilton or a Wilwood master cylinder and move on.
That advice was better than I could’ve imagined, but it still didn’t solve the problem.  Since there’s no room for a reservoir on top of the clutch master, I searched Wilwood and Tilton for viable remote-reservoir single-circuit master cylinders. When I saw the Wilwood described as “Girling style,” a light went on. The rebuilt slave cylinder I had recently installed was a Girling. An available diameter was 0.7 inches, exactly the same as the one I was replacing. It even looked remarkably similar.
I took some measurements and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Wilwood item 260-6088 would be a bolt-in perfect replacement for my unobtainium Eagle clutch master. Same overall length; same or slightly longer stroke; same bolt centers; same body diameter; similar inlet and outlet positions. So I ordered one, and a few different adapters to make it all work.

The similarities continued once I had it in my hand. I expected to cut and thread the rod coming from the pedal, but I was able to just remove the threaded one from the Wilwood and replace it with the OEM piece. Perfect.
An advantage of the Wilwood over OEM was its aluminum body. It weighs 13 ounces, exactly half that of the original cast-iron master.

I then spent most of a morning visiting auto parts stores, a hydraulics shop, and finally a speed shop until I got the proper solution to make my adapter work. The guy at Action Performance in Daytona Beach said a simple crush washer would provide the seal I needed.

I drilled out the mounting holes slightly (my bolts were just a bit larger in diameter) installed it, plumbed it, and invited some friends over for beers and a bit of clutch bleeding.

We bled the thing as well as we could, using all the tricks previously suggested by friends who are BMC and BMW owners. I started the car.
Then I failed again to put it in gear without forcing it, which caused a hearty crunch and stalled the engine. Despite all my efforts, I still didn’t have a functioning clutch.
We spent the rest of the night thrashing, and using a borrowed home colonoscopy kit snake camera, we checked the fork for play, looked into the bell housing, and tried to see if the clutch was disengaging or not.

It wasn’t. There was a lot of slop in the fork movement. Without removing the fork to see if it was bent, we instead tried to cram something on top of the pivot ball to take up the slack. Soon, I accidentally knocked the pivot ball out of place, and we tried to remedy that by cramming even bigger things in there, including the tracking ball from an old computer mouse (my friend is a bit of a hoarder) and a large fishing weight. Compare them in the photo above.
When even that failed to disengage the clutch, we tried attaching a ratchet strap to the clutch fork and pulling back on it. When the range of motion ran out, the clutch still wasn’t fully disengaged.

It was at this point, after two years of very little progress, after finding unobtainium parts and still failing, after a lot of stress, little to no satisfaction, and the dwindling of available time, that I decided the struggle needed to be over. I don’t need to torture my friends or myself with the prospect of pulling that transfer case out again.
It’s time I recognize that I’m not the right shepherd right now to lead this lost lamb back to roadworthiness. Maybe a new fork is all it needs; maybe not.

I put the Eagle up for sale, and found a buyer within a week. He’s a Fox-body Mustang aficionado (“It’s freaking me out how much that shifter feels like a Mustang,” he said. It’s no coincidence: they both use a T5.), a surfer and a service tech. He’s confident he can get the Eagle going again and plans to use it as a surf wagon. I look forward to seeing it on the road. I may provide the occasional update as I receive news from him.
In the meantime, I’ve got a garage floor to clean of oil, transmission and brake fluid. Then, I’ll move my Subaru Justy project to the middle and start tearing the engine down to see the cause of its terrible compression numbers. One distinct advantage the Justy has over the Eagle: I can push it around my garage by myself.
[Photos copyright 2015 Alan Cesar/Hooniverse]