I recently reinstalled my transmission and I am two bolts away from finish, but my slave cylinder won’t seem to line up with the bolt holes in the transmission. I’ve tried cracking the bleeder and line loose to see if the slave will compress more and it didn’t do make any difference. Has anyone run into this before? If so what am I doing wrong?

 

when you had the tranny out, did you happen to move or remove the fork for any reason?

 

The pushrod on the slave cylinder is independent, meaning if you pull the rubber off, the rod will just fall out. It's possible that the back of it is caught on the lip of the cast iron and not contracting. That's the only reason I could think of why the pushrod wouldn't compress especially with the bleeder open

 

I moved it back and forth once but besides that no

 

i’ll try that when i get home from work today I’ll attach a picture below of it “fully compressed” and see if something else may be wrong.

 

looks like original rubber hose. it's probably deteriorated inside and wont allow fluid to pass.

 

looking at the photo, i'm inclined to think it's what derSchwamm said. pull it out just enough to try to center it, then try to compress it and see what happens.

 

it didn’t work repositioning the pin. Maybe it’s the fork then? Like it moves when i push on it where the slave cylinder would be but I don’t know if it should be going farther back or not

 

It's more of a bitch to reattach than it ought to be. When I did it recently, I put a temporary stud in one of the holes because I needed three hands to get attached. I also had to pre-twist the hydraulic line so it would untwist as I "turned" the SC back into position.

I suggest you do a reality check measuring the SC length from the mounting holes to the end of the plunger (compressed and freely uncompressed. Compare that to the corresponding measurement on the tranny: hole to the center of the shift fork interface.
See if you're even in the same ballpark. Have you checked to make sure the shift fork still moves reasonably?

 

the fork does move a few inches back and forth. How far should it move and how compressed should the slave be?

 

I’m buying a new slave and line through work since I can get them cheap so I’ll see if that does the trick

 

It's good the shift fork moves- no idea on the exact range in inches. The basic technique I used to reinstall the SC was:

- make sure that inside the rubber boot, the plunger rod was aligned with the piston. if you can can compress the rod into the SC, then that is correct. If you can't compress it at this point, then something is misaligned/the rod is over extended, or reversed. FWIW, it looks correct in your picture above.

- point the plunge rod end at the dimple in the shift fork, and press the body of the SC against it, compressing the assembly until at least one of the holes aligns. Note: while it's tempting to try to keep the SC compressed and place it the same time, I found it to be too difficult with the system filled (as mine was).

- The bolt holes in the tranny are angled a slightly weird way and I found it difficult to get the bolt properly engage. That's why I put a temp stud in to place the SC and that allowed me to futz with it to get it right.

 

The plunger rod definitely looks more extended than I would expect for the 'contracted' stage. I think replacing the slave and hose are a good next step. A few years back I did the slave, master, hardline, and softline altogether for about $110.

 

exedy slave from mazdatrix was 75 bucks for me, haven't bought lines yet...