Brake wheel cylinder. What's wrong?.

[Olds]

Out of curiosity I pulled apart one of the old slave cylinders from the brake setup I bought, prior to throwing it in the bin. Both sides had been leaking and the guy was selling to upgrade his brakes.
Apart from corrosion whats wrong with this cylinder ? 

[Clive]

It's in four pieces??

[Olds]

 
OK, apart from the extremely obvious, like it's in bits, no brake pipe fitted, or it's not in a brake assembly.

[Stix]

Think I might have put the seals in the other way round.

Stix

[kapri]

Seals round the wrong way.

[Manky Monkey]

I was going to say the same but only cos it's the only component you could fit incorrectly -can you explain why they should be the other way round?

[Stix]

If you look closely you can see that they are slightly tapered  and they need to go on the other way so the fluid pushes them open and harder onto the bore of the cylinder.

Stix

[Olds]

Yep, seals are fitted the wrong way round.
The groove in the seal must be towards the fluid so that the pressure pushes the lip out against the housing bore.

No wonder it was leaking. The way they were fitted, they will seal at very low pressure but over a certain point the pressure will compress the seal edge and allow fluid to pass.

[minimutly]

They may have come from the factory that way, i fitted a pair to the rear of my cf camper years ago, one set was exactly like that.