That didn't really work, even with the top sealed with duck tape and a seal around where I was forcing the air in. I put a piece of wood between the cylinder and the ground and banged it on there, that didn't work so I resorted to shielding the metal with another piece of wood and hit it with my big-ass hammer, still no movement. I sprayed in more PB'Laster and then sprayed air in to see if it bubbled, that meant the air was leaking out. It bubbled up a little at first but slowly bubbled over. Then I got the idea that if I was seeing bubbles that meant something was replacing the air in back of the seal, namely the PB'Laster. So I'd pump the air for a second let the bubbles stop, then pumped again. I got enough PB behind the seal and let it sit for a little while, this time when I banged the valve end (open end where the clutch pedal pushes) against the wood the piston finally moved. A few more bangs and the piston came out.
In the first picture you can see what the piston looked like before I did anything to it other than pull it out. Once it was out though I took it apart as much as I could, into about 3 or 4 pieces big pieces and started to remove the rubber seals that were basically sponge after years of dry rot and brake cleaner soaking. Once all the rubber was off I removed the plastic pinch cap from the back end of the piston, if the rubber there was solid it would have had to come off first. After all the rubber and plastic was off I took the wire-brush Dremel head to all the metal and removed a ton of surface rust from the guiding rod and other components that had caused such a problem in removing the piston. Once I was content all the parts were as clean as they were going to get I rebuilt the whole piston, new rubber boots and the tiny metal waster that goes under the pinch cap.
Then I turned my attention to cylinder itself, the cap was destroyed from all the grabbing it with pliers so I ground down the rough spots and smoothed out the edge. I wire-brushed the whole surface, bottom, and threads cleaning off the brake fluid that had turned to glue and sealed it so tightly. Once the top was cleaned I covered the threads, bottom, and holes with painters tape and then clear coated the surfaces that would be exposed to air. The actual cylinder got a similar treatment with the wire-brush cleaning and polishing the surface and then clear-coating the exposed parts to prevent more corrosion.
Then we built out own extended sanding rod and attached it to the drill to clean out the inside of the cylinder. If you're going to attempt this be very careful because if you mess up the seal inside the whole thing is just scrap alloy. We wrapped 1000 grit sandpaper on a drill-bit wrapped in duck tape. The paper wasn't held on tight, we counted on the paper trying to unwrap to do all the real work.
To clean out all the dust we'd created with the sandpaper I improvised a barrel cleaner with a screwdriver, duck-tape and a paper towel.
Quick spray of brake cleaner inside to get anything else in there, then we liberally greased up the piston with red brake grease and slide it back into the cylinder. Once it was in I screwed on the lid (complete with new rubber seal) and the hydraulic line to do a bench test that it would pump fluid. At first we had issues getting it to put out fluid, but once we primed the output end it sprayed like a champ.
So the master cylinder was finished and ready to go back into the car. A severely skinned and cramped hand later the cylinder was back in, with the new boot, the push rod was reattached to the clutch pedal and to the master cylinder. We bleed the clutch and now it had feeling, the car slide right into gear.
An interesting dialogue is price comment. I feel that it is best to write more on this matter, it may not be a taboo topic however usually individuals are not enough to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers.
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