Wrong. The input shaft seal fits in the rear of the slave that is only staked into the alum. housing. Easy to dislodge the staked part when changing that seal. The pic is the part in question from a stripped down slave.
Fitting a seal and damaging the housing are two seperate things. Is it possible to damage the housing while changing the seal? Sure, but it doesn't change the fact that that seal doesn't actually seal any portion of the slave cylinder that contains brake fluid.
Fitting that seal has caused the hydraulic leak...easily done. The only safe way to renew the input shaft oil seal is to bolt the slave back onto a dummy trans housing(without the shaft fitted) then lever out the old seal and drive in a new one. This stops any chance of the staked 'sandwich' construction of the slave being 'pulled apart' and disrupting the staked end that has a hydraulic seal 'O' ring under it.
The seal was replaced by an experienced transaxle mechanic; is it possible he screwed up? Sure, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt until its taken apart to see what really happened.
Suggest you check the Ford blueprints. BTW the green or brown boot is just a dust boot to stop crap ripping up the inner slave seal that runs on the tube part of the pic.
That's why I said boot or other portion, because it apparently wasn't leaking immediately. If the boot was damaged and foreign material got inside, it could have damaged the inner seal during the bleed process.
Terry said he can bring an opened up slave along to SZ just so you can see it first hand and the fact that a poorly changed input shaft seal can cause a hydraulic leak.
I know what the slave cylinder looks like, I've got two of them sitting at home. And like I said, there is a difference between changing a seal, and changing it poorly. Last time I checked, there is more than one guy on the planet that is capable of working on the MTX-75 successfully, and its a little arrogant to assume otherwise. Maybe he did damage the housing, but maybe he didn't, and someone else did . . . right now, there is no evidence visible, and there may never be conclusive evidence anyway. There were a lot of hands involved with that trans; the slave cylinder could have been damaged by any one of them unknowingly.
THE BOOT WAS NOT DAMAGED UPON INSTALLATION Brian! I have installed many of these w/o issue and know how to do it.
I wasn't there, and didn't see how it went, but I still don't think you can say that unequivocally, the way I heard it, the trans didn't just slip right on all buttery smooth. Either way, It's not like it would be the only thing that got screwed up on Pud's car during this swap; The engine has to come out anyway now because the timing jumped on it.
