Locker reservoir rubber fitting replacement

Technical articles by owners, for owners.
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berger
Canada
Posts: 1169
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:36 pm
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Locker reservoir rubber fitting replacement

Post by berger »

I plan on bleeding all the locker fluid shortly, so I bought a Power Bleeder to make the job that much easier. Thanks to a quick search of the forum, I read that I should make sure the rubber elbows and t-fittings were solid before adding pressure to the system...good thing I did, as mine were all cracked (thanks Jim L.!)

It is a pretty simple procedure, but I thought I would post some pics of what I did because I know it helps me when others do it. There is a cautionary step here, but I will leave that till the end. 8)

After opening the panel, my first step was to drain all the fluid from the reservoir. I couldn't find my wife's turkey baster...perhaps I used it for something already :? ...so I used a "flavour injector" instead. It was NOT clean fluid!

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I then created a foil pan (Thanks Morris!) which I slid under the fittings to catch any drops of fluid.

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Then I removed the reservoir....

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Then I gently tugged all of the fittings off of the plumbing...

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You can see how cracked the fittings had become...

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I ended up buying replacement clamps from SAV (which aren't quite clamps by the way, but metal tubing cut into 1/4" pieces that slip onto the rubber), but I just re-used the old ones. My method was to slip the clamps onto the rubber, slide them up just slightly (about a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch), then insert the metal tubing into the rubber. This worked well and the clamp stayed in position.

Ready to reinstall...

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Pressing the rubber onto the plumbing was a little more tricky, but they eventually pressed on.

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I refilled with fresh DOT3, and I will bleed the system in the next couple of days.

Now, my cautionary note....DO NOT DO THIS IN FLIP FLOPS! After I was done, I jumped out of the passenger side, stepped on a piece of 2x4 some careless person had left there... :roll: ...and rolled my ankle! I have it wrapped in ice as we speak! Don't say I didn't warn you! :lol:
Ottawa, Canada
1974 710M
2007 2WD Ural Patrol
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