Clutch failure?

A garage owning mate looked after a granny's car and she was often bringing it in because she had misjudged the width of her drive entrance and taken it down the wall on one side or another, or more regularly, a new clutch. ;-(

He went out for a drive with her a few times to try to help her drive better but eventually gave up.

The reason for the excessive clutch wear was that she typically set the revs (till she could hear the engine) and than controlled the speed on the clutch.

To try to assist her he put small stickers on the speedo, recommending speed she changed gear and another on the rev counter indicating what should be 'sufficient' to do most things but it didn't help.

Cheers, T i m

As I was letting the clutch in to set off when the lights went green, the clutch engaged very sharply (because the pedal "linkage" had failed so the pedal no longer held the clutch disengaged) and the car stalled. So it stalled in gear. I tried using the starter but because the road was sloping uphill, the starter wouldn't move the car - and I was concerned about how much current the starter motor would draw when it had to move the car uphill so I didn't try for long. I tried rolling backwards a couple of inches to take up the slack, but still the gear lever was jammed. Eventually after working the pedal repeatedly, the linkage actually engaged with the clutch so I was able to put the car in neutral and then roll backwards into a roadside parking space to wait for the RAC to tow me to the garage - which agreed to stay open to book my car in. When I got the clutch to work, there was the temptation to think that the problem had cleared itself and I'd be able to drive home and then take it to the garage in the village, but I'm glad I resisted that temptation because it only worked a couple of times and then failed again.

It turned out to be a hydraulic actuator between the pedal cable and the clutch lever on the gearbox housing: a burst seal or something like that. Moderately expensive but nothing like the remove-engine-and gearbox labour and parts of the actual clutch.

I often hear that in supermarket or garden centre car parks - usually elderly drivers (*): wind up the engine revs to about 2000 and then let the clutch in very very gently so the car crawls as the car reverses out and then as it sets off. I suppose I'm lucky in my diesel-engined car that it will pull away from rest with the engine idling and no throttle, which makes very slow manoeuvring and hill-starts a doddle.

The other thing that will wear the clutch very quickly is holding the car on an uphill at a junction by setting the clutch to rub continuously so the forward force balances the backwards rolling-down-the-hill force. My mum used to do that sometimes in her old Morris Minor because it saves having to use the handbrake to do a proper hill start, but I remember her saying (when I was about 5) "don't do this when *you* start driving".

(*) I wonder if some of these car-crashes-into-supermarket "the car just took off - I couldn't stop it" incidents are when the engine is racing at

My late father and I wrote one off after about nine months. It was unfortunate I ever allowed him to teach me to drive :-)

what are Yugos really like?

NT

It may make sense to change the clutch sooner rather than later. To avoid damage to the flywheel.

If it's a diesel, it seems the done thing is to replace the DMF at the same time ... or get shot of the vehicle.

Was the previous owner a granny? Micras are the sort of car that many older women favour because they are fairly inexpensive to purchase and run. Despite the previous posters comment about driving like a granny his line ?and never make it slip? is important. Many grannies have poor clutch control partly I suppose due to weakening of leg and foot muscles or painful joints, it is not unusual to hear one pull away with the engine screaming like a banshee but without the progress that should accompany that with the smell of burning clutch wafting from the car.

The local garage has such a customer, she needs a new clutch about every

GH

Quite.

I can remember simply replacing the driven plate in years gone by. Clutch cover and flywheel still OK. ;-)

I've had two Skoda Octavia diesels. Both have exhibited the same clutch characteristics. Normally they are fine and give smooth good gearchanges.

But...... If creeping along in almost stationary traffic - a good example is when in backed up queues in the Mersey Tunnel - the clutch starts to judder. The judder then gets progressively worse until, in the first one I had, the car became very difficult to drive. The judder could, I think, sync up with the resonant frequency of the DMF. Whatever the cause was, it could stall the engine.

After a rest and cooling down period, everything would return to normal.

With the first Octavia, I was planning to get the DMF changed to a proper flywheel (Skoda do one for taxis), but other things went wrong, so I traded it in. We still have the newer one and at just over 100k miles, the "feature" is there, but liveable with.

After I'd passed my test, but before I needed a car of my own, I lost first and second gears in my parents' car (a Fiat 131), at a junction. I managed to get home with third and fourth and slipping the clutch to set off. Once home I found it was a worn part of the linkage, at the bottom of the gear lever and I turned up a replacement on the lathe. An hour or so later, all was back to normal.

SteveW

In most cases the cars involved seem to be automatic.

It is likely that the driver has missed the brake pedal, caught the accelerator, but thinks that their foot is on the brake and so presses harder and everything happens so quickly that there is no time to correct the error.

Possibly more likely in smaller cars as well - I have driven a couple where the offside, front wheel protrudes so far into the car that the pedals are all offset to the left and you have to drive sitting at a slight angle. It's very easy to put your foot on the wrong pedal in those - particularly if you drive a larger car most of the time.

SteveW

Well that was in the '80s. Yugos and Ladas (part of my learning was in a Lada) were basically older Fiat designs or at least based on Fiat mechanicals. So basically simple, reasonably reliable, not overly comfortable or particularly well handling, but they served their purpose and were cheap. All prone to rust to pieces though.

SteveW

I'm sorry but I disagree. The Lada, have no idea about Yugos, had the floorpan and bodyshell of a Fiat 124.

The engine and running gear, brakes and suspension were Russian design. And as rugged as hell.

I recall an issue with calipers, where a round cylinder was held/pressed into a carrier. Naturally it would stop being round and the piston seize in the bore.

They were overhead cam (chain driven), some had Weber carbs. The thermostat was a sophisticated bypass affair. It was fearfully uneconomical!

The Micra does too if you plug an OBD-II dongle into it.

It could be the actuator (cable or hydraulic?) rather than the clutch itself.

You learn something new every day.

SteveW

Not a new phenomenon either. P.J.O'Rourke forensically (and hilariously) dissected the US FTA investigating "Sudden Unintended Acceleration Incidents" (SUAIs). He noted how sad it was that it paid more for an engineer petrolhead to work for the government than in business, and how the final report had to be carefully worded to hide the actual cause under a layer of fluffy words. The reason being in every case it was obvious the morons had pressed the accelerator by mistake.

He also noted the mysterious fact that SUAIs were only every reported in non-US cars ...

This was in 1990.

Not a cable in sight, either.