I could really use some advice on how to remove my windshield washer fluid reservoir in my year 2000 Chevy Express 2500. It is currently leaking, but there is no way to identify if the leak is in the bottle or a hose or the pump at the bottom of the reservoir. There is no way to access this area via the engine bay, nor the wheel well(the wheel well is metal and cannot be pulled back to reveal anything.

I successfully removed the one bolt holding on the reservoir, and it is now loose, but the plastic reservoir body keeps getting blocked by the brake lines on the master cylinder when I try to pull it up and out. Any ideas on how to get this reservoir out? Thank you for any help ahead of time.

 

It seems like the only way is to remove the master cylinder? I strongly hesitate to mess with that... do not want to have to bleed brakes

 

Maybe you can remove the nuts holding on the master cylinder without removing the lines and move them enough to get clearance to take out the reservoir. i don't know but it could work.

 

Chevy design makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall sometimes... I bought the an FSM online and sure enough it says you need to remove the master cylinder in order to access the washer fluid reservoir. dumb

 

I just got finished with this repair. Like you, when I heard you had to remove the master cylinder, I thought maybe I wasn't up for the task. There is very little info online about this repair. However, while you do have to MOVE the master cylinder, its a lot less onerous that it sounds. It is exactly like oldchevy says. You don't actually disconnect any brake lines or hoses, so no bleeding/fluid loss, etc.. You just unbolt the master cylinder from the "hydroboost" (I think that's what its called). It pulls off and allows you to GENTLY move the master cylinder out of the way (my brake lines on my 2004 are old and crusty, so I was careful) so you have room to pull the reservoir up an out.

Mine turned out to be a leaky pump. Swapped it with a relatively cheap replacement from Autozone and all is well. It still required some Tetris-like maneuvering, but not nearly as bad as I feared when I initially heard I had to "remove the master cylinder", which would be more than I wanted to tackle.

 

Thank you, Dan. Just so I am clear...in the picture below are these the 2 bolts(only 1 circled in red) that I need to remove? The other one is out of view on the left side of the master cylinder. They are weird bolts that you need to hold with a wrench on the backsides to extract?

 

that worked thanks Dan! Same issue with mine... it was just the pump. $13 for a new one on Amazon.