I replaced all three today. Took me about an hour total. Keep in mind my Miata only has 25,000 miles on it and they're warm sunny day miles so rust wasn't a factor to deal with.

Master: Simply two bolts holding it on. Take the hydraulic/brake line off, take off the two nuts and it's falling off in your hands.

Slave: I took the passenger side wheel off which gave me a very clear look at the slave cylinder. I took the hydraulic/brake line off first. Took a 10mm open end wrench. I used a 12mm socket with a long extension to take the top bolt out of the slave cylinder. I used a box wrench to take the bottom bolt out from underneath the car.

Replacement line: Since I had no intention of reusing the lines I started by cutting the hard lines at the connectors. I used some long needle nose to remove the retention clips and just pulled the soft line out with a stub of hard line still attached. The hard line from the master cylinder is connected to the firewall with plastic clips. The new stainless line would not fit in the clips so I had to replace them. The rubber bushing that holds the coiled hard line will no longer be needed when replacing it with a single line. I highly recommend this since it's much simpler and very worth the $50 in my opinion.

 

I forgot to mention, I have a vacuum bleeder from harbor freight that I've used on brakes eleventy billion times. Bleeding took me about 2 minutes.

 

Ok... it takes me two minutes to bleed a clutch too, and my bleed actually doesnt suck.

 

I love how easy the Miata is to work on. God bless those Mazda engineers. I was stoked when I swapped my clutch master and didn't have to do any under-dash yoga.

 

The slave was leaking on mine. I'm the type that if I have to bleed the line, I might as well do the other upgrades if they're not too expensive. I've turned as many or more wrenches as anyone, just never on a Miata before. So I've got the right tools for the right job.

 

This seems like a basic question, but I'm in the home stretch of a 1.8 swap, and I can't figure out where the flex line to hard line connector mounts to the bell housing?
Stock lines, 90.




Mike

 

Theres a bigass tab. Soft line goes through the hole in the tab, the hex on the line lines up with the tab so it cant spin. And theres a big *** clip that holds the soft line in. The hardline for the clutch should already be right there, and I bet there's a puddle of brake fluid and pealed paint under where the connection goes.

 

From the stickied FSM:

 

What he said. It's all held in place with a "U" shaped clip
But do yourself a favor and replace it with a one piece stainless braided line.