Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem

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Thu 23 Aug 2012 11:21
Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem - primeradriver

Car is a 2007 (MKIII) Ford Mondeo 2.0l petrol, 74000 miles.

Just bought this car recently, and have noticed an annoying fault with it.

When changing up through low gears, after having changed gear and bringing the clutch up, if the engine has not had chance to rev down to equalise with the required engine speed of the next gear there is a noticeable clunk from the drivetrain.

This means that gear changes need to be taken slowly to avoid this irritant, which does rather detract from 'enthusiastic' driving...

Change downs don't have this problem for obvious reasons.

What is the likely cause of this problem? The clutch works as it should otherwise. I'm hoping it's just a flaky mount rather than the clutch itself.

I have had this with one other car, a Daewoo, which was exacerbated by a very slow drive-by-wire system (shared with other smaller GMs in my experience) that meant that in order to avoid the clunk, you had to wait a second or two while changing gear, which drove me spare. Thankfully I didn't have to drive that thing on a day-to-day basis but this car is my daily driver so this problem will drive me to distraction if not fixed!

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Thu 23 Aug 2012 11:50
Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem - unthrottled

It's not a clutch problem.

I had a poorly centred throttle butterfly which wouldn't fully close and it would take ages for the engine to spin down to an elevated idle of about 1300RPM. Horrible to drive.

easy enough to loosen the two torx screws holding the butterfly onto the shaft, open and close it once or twice to centre it, then tighten up. Cleaned by the iCV at the ame time, problem solved.

Do you have a fast idle problem or any hunting at idle?

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Thu 23 Aug 2012 12:14
Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem - primeradriver

Interesting, thanks for the reply unthrottled.

I have not noticed a fast idle problem with the Mondeo. I have noticed the idle being a little faster than I'd have expected on one or two occasions when the car has been cold.

The Daewoo was terrible for it (endemic problem with GM engines of the period). What you've described matched the symptoms on that car pretty much exactly. In the case of the Daewoo I just put it down to the car being carp and lived with it lol.

I'll keep an eye on the idle. It does spin down to idle more slowly than I would have expected; I'll look into getting this sorted.

Not a major problem then by the sound of things :) Although surely even taking into account the slow spin-down the drivetrain shouldn't be clunking should it?

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Thu 23 Aug 2012 12:32
Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem - unthrottled

Could be the classic vacuum leak in one of the hoses. When a petrol engine is slow to spin down, it can only really be because there is too much air getting into it and the injectors are still pulsing. I'd have thought a car of that vintage would shut off the injectors on overrun-unless there is a vacuum leak somewhere?

Try and leak chase the hoses with some carb cleaner or similar aerosol.

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Thu 23 Aug 2012 15:41
Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem - bathtub tom

I thought modern petrol engines are prevented from throttle snap off for some reason I can't recall.

I found it particularly irritating when returning to petrol after a decade of diesels.

I do have a '90s carburettored car also that doesn't suffer from it.

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Thu 23 Aug 2012 16:58
Ford Mondeo - Irritating (clutch?) problem - primeradriver

So, I lived with this problem for 5 years on the Daewoo and you're telling me it was potentially a leaky hose all along? lol.

I hated that car, in no small measure down to the throttle response...

I'll look into it over the weekend and see what can be done. Live and learn :)

Edited by primeradriver on 23/08/2012 at 16:59

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