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Yeah, the pry bar approach is only for those who really understand the anatomy of the car and are confident they can "first do no harm" as doctors say. It is possible but not for faint of heart. The main dangers are distorting the pressure plate asymmetrically (if you pry too far, you may bend the fingers a bit and then it won't be even and your release bearing will push against a crooked surface) and scratching the slave cylinder's center post with the pressure plate fingers if it's moving around on the flywheel. I think I loosened the pressure plate bolts but used them as guides so that it wouldn't go off center as I carefully pried and turned the flywheel around to get all sides semi-evenly.
I've done the grease-gun thing, never on Saab slave cylinders, but on old Lotus brake calipers to disassemble them. The difficulty is that you need to get a good seal between the grease gun and the slave fluid inlet. I have sometimes had success getting a grease gun on the bleeder bolt nipple, but sometimes grease leaks between the threads when it's loose (which it needs to be in order to let the grease in). If the gun doesn't fit, you'll need to make an adapter. You can probably do this with a spare bleeder bolt, a zerk fitting, and a matching tap. Luckily the pressure required to compress the plate should be lower than that required to disassemble Lotus brake calipers, so you may get away with mismatched threads, bad fittings, etc. Teflon plumber's tape does wonders. Good luck!! I hope you get it.
Also, if you take apart the slave and don't see pitting in the cylinder walls, you can definitely rebuild it. The cylinder walls are anodized for hardness and often the o-rings fail without any damage to the walls. Finally of note is that, if you're going to buy a new slave cylinder, beware the green seals. They are known to be bad. The black ones are better and I would take apart any new slave cylinder I get to make sure it has the black seals. You can take it apart easily by pressing on the nose of it in a vise. The center part comes out the backside, sealed with an o-ring. Use your old one for practice.
When you buy a new slave, beware Professional Parts Sweden (aka Proparts), which has a reputation as a putrid dumpster fire of a company. *Certain retailers* sell the Proparts slave but call it OE "genuine SAAB". I don't know how they get away with this, but it says so under "installation info". Fool me once, as they say, shame on them.
Sorry for the longwinded post. I've just been in there due to a failed hose, which I only discovered after I'd gotten the slave out, so it's, as they say, fresh in my mind.
posted by 50.227....
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