I'm in the process of doing a routine brake fluid flush on my '98 Cherokee, and there's a lot of black sludge on the inside of the reservoir. Some of it was coming loose in small pieces when I sucked out the old fluid and poured in some new, so I bought a couple liters of brake fluid and used a turkey baster with tubing on the end to try to "flush" out the reservoir a bit. It mostly worked for the front half, but the back half too tight to get the tube into.

What I'm hoping to do is pop off the reservoir, clean it out properly with solvent, and reinstall it without any leaks from the seals (fingers crossed). Any tips for how to do this successfully and without leaks? It appears there are two roll pins I need to pop out first and the whole thing will lift off. Here are some pics.

 

I personally wouldn't... I used a turkey injector (big *** needle) I bought at the dollar store, and used that to stir/mix stuff around/scrape the bottom, and then suck it out. It allowed me to get in deep enough to get the majority of stuff cleaned out. or I would just buy a whole new brake master cylinder... with the age yours currently is, I wouldn't trust myself to not shatter the plastic.

 

Your concern is more the plastic breaking than the two seals leaking?

 

looks like two pins to me.. Just remove those and you'll probably be able to twist and then pop off the reservoir. Good luck and don't worry if all else fails buy a new one XD. This will be a good learning experience let me know how it goes.

 

That looks right. I can't figure out why it doesn't work, but I sure have not been able to make that work on mine.

 

Update:

Those two roll pins came out no problem with a punch, but I couldn't get the reservoir separated from the master cylinder. I gave up before I broke the plastic or screwed up the seals and just used a turkey baster and piece of 1/4" tubing to blast the goop loose and suck out the contaminated fluid. I did this many times and went through a few liters of brake fluid in the process. Then I flushed a bunch of clean fluid through the lines. The reservoir has lots of baffles, so you can't just get in there with a brush, unfortunately. It's hard to see without back-lighting it, but the reservoir is MUCH cleaner now.