Hydraulic Throw Out Bearing from Hell

How about testing the TO bearing before putting it in the car? Hook it up to a master cylinder and put it in a vice against a valve spring. Cycle it a few times and see if it leaks.

 

Guys have more trouble with McCleod than any other, us too. If possible make a pedal stop after disc has the proper gap with the pedal down. With the exception of a McCleod clutch use the TOB of the same manufacture of your clutch. We use Ram.

 

I've got 2 cars with the Hyd TO Brg and don't really like them, especially the '31 Hiboy on '32 P&J frame. The '40 coupe isn't giving any trouble so far, but I don't like the feel or the non adjustable part.
The Hiboy I bought as a sort of "mocked up" rolling chassis, using an SBC with a Ford 4 speed toploader modified with a Jeep top shifter. It had a slave cylinder/fork combo with a McLeod safety bell housing, and clutch/pp assy inside, and I wish I had discarded that "half breed" system right off the bat!
I went ahead and finished the car with the hyd/mech system and had nothing but trouble with it, and never got it to work right. Had that 140# toploader in and out so many times I lost count. I really think I had some geometry problems with the mixture of Chev. and Ford stuff, compounded by the safety bell housing.
Eventually I went to the McLeod full hydraulic, and have had a great deal of the problems related to earlier in this thread. Finally removed the toploader with the Jeep shifter top after the thin and flimsy components failed twice under "enthusiastic" shifting. Installed another toploader I already had and a Hurst shifter. Still using the hyd to brg though.
And I dread the day the same shit starts happening to the '40, which I bought as a completed car, equipped with a T-5 and SBF.
The link to the cable system as installed and used by D-Russ looks to be the easiest way to get rid of the hydraulic systems in both cars, and is going to be in my mind if and when I have further problems with either hot rod.

 

Asking a large diameter, small cross section, oring to last, considering all the movement of constant shifting seems to be a bit much. Each pedal depression and release, that oring is moving 1/2" on the way down and 1/2" on the way up. Brake caliper orings are also large but they only move thousands of an inch on each brake application. Also, if the vehicle sits for any length of time and the hyd fluid drains from around the oring, now it is moving dry on the next pedal depression. There was another post here recently and it was stated that the HTOB manufacturer had recommended periodically depressing the pedal during storage - most likely to prevent the oring getting dry. Removing the tranny to get at it, and a leak makes a mess inside the bell housing; replaced the HTOB from hell with an external slave.