Clutch failure?

Also driving in heels can lead to the sole lightly touching the pedal. Enough to cause a permanent micro-slip which wears the clutch.

It was a false economy job beloved of back-street cowboy workshops. Especially if the bulk of the cost of the job was the labour to remove the gearbox.

My ate motherdive into the back of a stationary artic in the middle of a town.

"I forgot where the brake pedal was"

She wasnt required to take a test and her dementia had not been officailly diqagnosed.

She bought another car. And drove for another 2 years.

Actually, I have done that. It never occurred to me that it could detect a mechanical failure such as a clutch.

Some garages would love to charge you all over again for the engine-out labour to replace the DMF at a later date.

I was impressed with my garage who recommended that I have the water pump replaced (*) at the same time as the cambelt was being routinely changed, to avoid me having to pay twice for the labour, given that the water pump is driven off the cambelt on my car.

(*) Even if it seemed to be working fine. Cost of water pump is much less than cost of labour to remove it.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a dual mass flywheel?

A woman I worked with always lifted her whole foot off the floor as she released the clutch, rather than keeping her heel on the floor and using it as a pivot to give greater control of the clutch. And she rarely wore high heels, so it wasn't a way of compensating for that.

I raidse yuou 6 hours of labour to replace a £5 thermostat in a freelander TD4

I was in a crash caused by that error as a rear seat passenger. The other driver insisted they pressed the brake as hard as they could but their speed increased and there were no skid marks (pre ABS brakes).

Police crash investigators concluded they hit the accelerator pedal.

I have declutched the brake on an automatic car more than once - usually in an unfamiliar hire car when approaching a complicated pay station chicane in some horrible dingy multistorey carpark.

I doubt it does.

I think the idea is it acts like a light weight for when the velocity of the flywheel needs to change quickly, but a heavy weight when it's needed to keep the engine stable. There are springs and weights involved which are slotted into a recess in the flywheel. I'm guessing there are metal fatigue issues around having to much around with the single casting of the flywheel.

I wonder if a system with two flywheels might be better ?

Cars with flappy-paddles monitor the pressure and temperature of multiple valves in the mechatronics unit that operates the clutches.

No. It doesn't and thats not the idea.

It acts *like* a heavy flywheel in terms of smoothing out torque pulses but it is in fact lighter.

There are springs and weights involved which

It *is* a system with two flywheels

What is the typical police response if they suspect that the driver hit the accelerator instead of the footbrake. Is it regarded as a venial sin ("ah, what a silly thing to do - try not to do it again") or is it treated as careless/dangerous driving, maybe with reactions checked in a driving test? I get the impression that confusing the two controls is regarded as less serious and more forgivable than driving at 35 in a 30 zone or going through a red traffic light 2 seconds after it has changed when there's no other traffic around (I'd regard those latter two as far less serious because they are technical, potential faults rather than an actual collision-causing fault).

Likewise - usually because of my foot, instinctively feeling for the non-existent clutch, catches that stupid double-width brake pedal that all automatic cars are fitted with for some godforsaken reason. I *never* brake with my left foot in an automatic: a) because I never want to brake and accelerate at the same time, so the same right foot will do for both, as in a manual, and b) because my left foot is attuned to larger, often less precise movements of the clutch pedal, so I wouldn't instinctively have the fine control to apply the brake without pressing too hard (*knowing* is one thing, reflex action in an emergency is quite another). If I have to do a hill start in an automatic, I don't use my left foot as I am pressing the accelerator with my right foot - I use my handbrake, as in a manual. And I almost always (*) go into neutral and apply the handbrake at traffic lights, as in a manual, to avoid me having to keep my foot on the brake - something I would regard as a hanging offence (!) because it dazzles the driver(s) behind at night.

I remember when I went go-karting, where the brake is operated with the left foot, we were all warned at the end of our session that if we'd driven there, we needed to pay particular attention to braking with the right foot again as we drove home.

I often find that when I drive a strange car, I get used to the different feel and location of its controls fairly quickly, but I then take a lot longer to get used to my own car again that I am much more familiar with. You'd think it would be the other way round. Trying to remember where reverse is can be a hassle: top-left (left of first) on my Peugeot, bottom-right (right of sixth) on my wife's Honda: and yet it's always my Peugeot, which I drive a lot more, that I have to think about - weird.

(*) Except when I anticipate that I'll only be stopped for a few seconds, as for a manual. I don't go into Park because that flashes the reversing lights as you move from Drive through Reverse to Park and back, which scares the living daylights out of the car behind...

As so I had it back to front ...

Ah well, I'm cleverer than I thought then :)

Weren't there some public transport systems which used flywheels on the trains instead of engines and had the engines in stations ? Until a flywheel came loose ....

I sometimes look at the "Briskoda" Skoda forum, where the general view seemed to be that the SMF was far superior to the DMF on the diesel Octavia. OTOH, I discussed it with the local (usually excellent) agent, who said they had fitted a couple of SMF's to taxis, and they had both returned and reverted to DMF's.

The forum advocates of SMF's mostly appeared to have used the same manufacturer for their non-OEM flywheels. My guess was that these flywheels were heavier than the others.

Where I suspected a resonant frequency of the DMF flywheel masses and springs, the effect was - for example - when waiting to turn right across traffic, a gap appears and you let the clutch in sharply, there is a bang and the engine stops dead. I wonder if there is some damping on the springs which can fail.

I like boat diesels with really heavy flywheels. I suspect the lighter mass of the DMF makes for a much more lively engine in a car.

Sounds like not enough revs and a too-light flywheel. DMF is probably a good idea - like IRS - if done properly. I.e. not swinging rear axles...I suspect the springs masses and damping need careful tuning and more development that they have in fact had...

Is that on a Skoda? I wonder if you've fallen foul of the quirk of some Volkswagen engines (I presume Skoda and Seat use VW engines) - I think it was the Mark 5 Golf which used the PD (Pumpe Duse) diesel engine rather than a more modern HDi-type engine. That model of Golf is the only diesel that I have ever stalled on test drives - sometimes repeatedly - when setting off. Even when I drive a petrol car (being used to driving diesels) I don't stall. But that VW seems to have an ECU which senses that you haven't applied enough power and instead of chugging, which is warning to apply more power, and eventually picking up speed, ie normal diesel behaviour, it reacts by cutting the fuel altogether, making absolutely certain that you will stall. It is also the only diesel car I've driven that doesn't like being driven in dense stop-start traffic by lifting the clutch with no accelerator, controlling the speed by a quick half-blip of clutch (maybe not even full engagement) and then press the clutch again to coast to a halt a few yards further on. You have to drive it more like a petrol, with fast idle and more clutch slippage to avoid going too fast for that engine speed - not a problem when setting off from rest to accelerate away, but a problem if you want to move a short distance in a queue of traffic.

Which type of box with flappy paddles? Some conventional torque converter auto boxes have those.

But the synchromesh type have multi plate wet clutches, hydraulically operated. More chance of getting a reading of sorts from that than a typical clutch. As in a Micra.