I had the misfortune of a clutch cover -to- flywheel bolt falling out and being projected through the internal gearbox case into the final-drive area. Gears weren\'t damaged to any extent but lots of oil got in the bellhousing. Garage (independent) got a replacement g/b case and \"degreased and sanded-down\" the flywheel before installing brand new Borg&Beck clutch and refitting everything. But right from picking up the car I\'ve had a bad clutch judder. Informed the garage, they said they\'d noticed it too, but leave it for a few weeks and see if it bedded-in. Two full months later and it\'s just as bad. Garage had another test drive and agree it judders and haven\'t mentioned any other cause like engine mounts.
They seem willing to take the box off and replace the clutch and refit everything free of charge ONCE, but are loath to do it without me getting another flywheel for them to fit at the same time, because they \"are worried it\'s the flywheel that must be ingrained with oil, and another clutch would go the same way\" and aren\'t keen on doing a free strip and refit yet ANOTHER time.
Their reasoning is that in all the years they\'ve fitted B&B clutches, they\'ve never had one malfunction like this.
Trouble is, a new flywheel is £335, and breakers are loath to separate one from an engine, which suggests paying out for a complete scrapped engine.
Could I get the existing flywheel skimmed or something?
Has anybody heard of a flywheel getting so ingrained with oil that even after \"degreasing and sanding down\" it would cause bad clutch judder on a brand new top-quality clutch? (and over 1000 miles of \'bedding in\' allowance)
Or is that just completely not feasible, and it MUST be the clutch itself that\'s faulty or somehow been fitted incorrectly??
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What car,?? describe the judder and exactly when it happens. Can you drive at 30pmh depress the clutch gnetly untill the revs rise by 1000 and you can maintain 30mph.. Come Back. Regards Peter
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96 Primera petrol. Yes I can do that - is that an attempt to deliberately slip the clutch to 'burn off' any oil? In which case yes, I've tried a bit of that - didn't seem to make any difference. Didn't want to do it too much in case risked building up a glaze on the friction material (?)
Clutch doesn't slip / no apparent further oil leaks / no problems with gearbox or gear changing / car drives normally otherwise, just really horrible in inching traffic queues!!
I'd say the judder frequency is about 15 Hz, is moderately violent, vibrates the whole car, and feels like it's not going to do gear teeth, CV joints, exhaust system any good at all if it persists for too long!
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Hi,
I had the exact same situation on my Rover 220: gearbox problem requiring removal, hence new clutch fitted and flywheel sanded. New clutch juddered, they told me to bed it in for 600 miles*: no improvement. They told me it was due to hard spots on the flywheel (due to oil contamination) which had not ground down like the rest of it.**
They told me that such a problem would get worse as the clutch got hotter. In fact it got less severe as the clutch got hotter. Therefore, they said, it was oil contaminating the flywheel*** and hence the clutch and the labour would not be covered under warranty. I managed to argue the toss on this, saying that if there was an oil leak they should not have put it back in. And if there was NOT an oil leak before, they had caused one!
I was in the same situation as you: they would only remove it once (and then only under sufference!) so I ended up getting a new flywheel and new clutch and new overdraft. It did not completely solve the problem however and I have since been told that a common cause of this problem on these cars is an insufficiently-greased spline.
Not sure this is of any help, but may be some things to consider.
Cheers,
Mark
*which I duly did and then they told me I should never have driven it for 600 miles like that, but brought it straight back. Cretins.
**"Why did you refit it in this condition?". Cretins.
***The flywheel, when they removed it, in fact had NO signs of oil contamination, so this "fact" was wrong. Cretins.
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>Cretins.
They seem to have several branches near me.
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Thanks for your info Mark.
But if the flywheel WASN'T contaminated, did you/they ever establish what the true cause of the problem was?
And you say even with a new wheel and clutch it wasn't 100% cured?
So you think it might have been fully cured if they'd slapped a load more grease on the splined shaft? Weird - that doesn't make obvious sense to me!
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Don`t know whether they did this or not.but the input shaft/splined shaft should have been degreased before the new clutch was fitted.due to build up of dust on the grease would make it congeal and act like a glue/sticky.the shaft would then be regreased using a smear of copperslip or equal.before re fitting the g/box.If the flywheel is contaminated depending on severity.It should have been skimmed though not sure if it is still done nowadays.apart from that if the clutch pressure plate incorrectly tightened will cause it as it distorts while fitting.giving same effect.
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You *could* have the flywheel skimmed, but I doubt this would solve the problem.
I suspect your problem is something more fundamental like (as others have said) centre plate sticking on splines, or some kind of misalignment between componenets. I would make sure that new gearbox casing and engine are mating absolutely correctly.
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> did you/they ever establish what the true cause of the problem was?
It got better (but not perfect) with a new clutch and flywheel. The fact that it was still not perfect after replacing basically the whole thing leads me to believe it was nothing to do with either part in the first place, but (as others have suggested) poor fitting.
Personally my suspicion is incorrectly greased spline. I have no way of proving this however. But I'd put money on a fitting problem.
Regarding comment about "if it didn't judder before, then they have to sort it", I pointed this out to them. They wormed every way they could, saying "well perhaps it DID judder before" (no it certainly did not!), "well it's due to your oil leak" (didn't cause a problem before!), "well it's due to your dodgy flywheel" (didn't cause a problem before!) etc. I persued this to absolute exhaustion and I got nowhere. They totally refused to admit any liability for it - knowing of course that I could not prove anything (they'd already removed the old clutch - evidence destroyed naturally by doing the job!). Not the service I hoped for from a main dealer. The best I could do was get them to remove and refit for free, and pay for a new flywheel and all new seals in that area - to cover every base. £1000 down the toilet. (And, amazingly, the original problem was a broken clutch cable mouning bracket, which DOES NOT require removal of the gearbox to replace!)
Good luck!
Mark
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Flywheel ingrained with oil? That's a new one on me. Now I'm no metalurgist, but I think it's impossible to get steel to absorb oil. Just as well really, otherwise the engine sump would lose all its oil, not to mention the gearbox oil, diffs, carb bowls, petrol tank etc. etc.
Suspect they screwed up the install, like greasing the splines, hanging the gearbox on the input shaft, incorrectly aligned clutch plate, incorrectly torqued cover bolts, oil on the driven plate, maybe the wrong clutch even, non oe parts.
Bottomline is, if it didn't judder before it went in, then it MUST be the clutch or its fitting. Either way, they need to strip it down and put it right by fitting a new clutch properly. Clutches used to be a simple remove and refit, but modern ones can be pretty technical, with all sorts of funny arrangements like dual mass flywheels and special release bearings that run all the time, and if not fitted absolutely correctly, will not work properly.
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Any steel can become ingrained with oil as all steels will accept oil.as also some parts are cast iron will also take in oil.problem is dispersing it from infected points.Take your point as I thought I mentioned if not correctly fitted etc.?
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No tunacat, this was not an attempt to burn the oil off this was to establish weather the friction surfave is contaminated. I don't think this is an oil problem as when you slipped the clutch, if you did it as I suggested, you did not have the judder so I do not think it is a friction surface problem but more like a clutch plate problem, busted absorbtion spring. When you say 15 hz do you really mean 15 times a second because that is not a surace problem but a thrust problem. Go to a VW specialist garage and let them take it for a run. Regards Peter
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Hmm... Peter, I would say that I don't really notice juddering and vibration when slipping the clutch at 60 mph say, though I must try it some more and get back to you.
It's obvious when setting off from rest, though less so if you have to nip smartly out into a gap at a busy roundabout for example. The worst case on my commute is 250 yards of slight uphill crawl where the dual carriageway traffic I'm in has to approach a roundabout. Here, the repeating cycle is: trickle along at about 4 mph for 10 yards, then have to brake ALMOST to a standstill but then the car in front sets off again so you're back lightly on the throttle and clutch foot coming slowly back up, slipping fashion (can't risk a full set-off). The judder/vibration here has a relatively high frequency, as I say about 15 cycles a second, rather than a "wocka wocka wocka" (!), but that may be down to the engine and road speed?
Can someone enlighten me further on how the amount of grease on the splines would cause this effect? Surely the movement along the splines is in a 'fore-aft' direction, nothing to do with rotation, and stickiness might just affect the 'suddenness' of the clutch action?
It definitely feels like inconsistency in the 'grabbing' over the course of a revolution - there's no suddenness or stickiness in the actual pedal / engagement/disengagement action.
The consensus here seems to be that remnant oil contamination on the flywheel is the LEAST likely cause of the problem.
Put another way, does anyone know of a case where that definitely WAS the cause?
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I would be inclined to think it is either the centre plate is distorted or the pressure plate was not tightened up in the correct sequence.whichever one still means a distorted clutch
giving that problem.The grease problem used to be a regular thing back in the seventys days of the vaux/viva
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Re the ammount of grease on the splines.
There should be NO grease on the splines as it has a tendency to fly off the rotating spline shaft and deposit itself on the clutch face which will then judder as described.
Some monkeys insist on daubing copious ammounts of copper grease all over with the results as described.
Having said all that there should be a special grease supplied with the clutch kit and a very small ammount should be applied to the splines.
Fullchat
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TC,
You say:...bolt ... projected through the internal gearbox case into the final-drive area.....replacement g/b case...
Do we infer from this that the gearbox was rebuilt using a new (or second hand) casing but with the original internals? Or was it a new or recon 'box that was fitted? If recon, who built it?
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Cyd,
It's my *belief* that the box was rebuilt using the original internals into a second hand casing, but I'd have to try interrogating the garage further to get the full story. They don't repair gearboxes themselves but send them to "their man" who has worked on boxes all his life.
As I said, they didn't think any gears themselves had been damaged, but they were concerned the bellhousing may have other hairline cracks in it from the bolt pinging around in there. So they sent the box to their man and he would supposedly use a second hand case and then whatever new or serviceable used parts were required in order to make the box good. So for all I know at the moment, it could just be an entire other box.
Cost was about £260 + vat for the gearbox 'repair' - that was for the whole of parts+labour done by 'their man'.
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My thinking was somewhat at a tangent to others here - grease on the splines seems a favourite. I was wondering if there might have been anything wrong with the rebuild, maybe a misaligned mainshaft.
In my own (limited) experience, clutch judder is often caused by a misaligned clutch. I used to think that a clutch must align itself when used, but experience from the good-old-days of rear drive taught me otherwise.
I'm unable to make any other suggestions, and would suggest my words here are not gospel.
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Cyd{P} The mainshaft is inside the gearbox connected to the input shaft/primary shaft which holds the clutch.misaligned clutch is I think right but tend to think it`s caused by either of what I mentioned before.? But may be wrong
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