Clutch replacement — gearbox out, everything checked

How to tell a clutch is going

Clutches rarely fail without warning. The friction material wears down gradually, and the car tells you long before it strands you:

• The biting point has crept up. You used to pull away with the pedal near the floor; now it grabs right at the top of the travel.
• Revs rise but speed doesn't. Classic slip. Most obvious in third or fourth going uphill, or in a loaded van pulling away.
• A judder as you pull away. The car shudders through the floor and seat instead of moving off smoothly.
• A smell like burning carpet. Usually after a hill or a long queue. That is friction material cooking.
• A heavy or vague pedal, or one that sinks. Often the hydraulics — master or slave cylinder — rather than the clutch itself, and much cheaper to fix if it is caught early.
• Rattling at idle that stops when you press the pedal. Frequently a release bearing, sometimes a tired dual-mass flywheel.

If you have any of these, get it looked at. A slipping clutch that is driven for another few thousand miles wears through the friction material to the rivets, and those rivets then score the flywheel — turning a £480 job into a much bigger one.

Dual-mass flywheels, and when they genuinely need replacing

Most modern diesels and a lot of petrol cars use a dual-mass flywheel: two plates with springs between them, absorbing the shock of the engine's power pulses so the gearbox does not have to. They wear out. When they do you get rattling at idle, vibration on pull-away, and a gearbox that sounds like a bag of spanners.

They are also expensive, and they are a favourite of garages who add them to every quote as a matter of course. Erdi measures the free play and checks the rock on the flywheel with the gearbox off, and tells you what it actually is. If yours is within tolerance it goes back on and you keep the money. If it is past it, you get shown the movement before it is replaced — not told about it afterwards.

Where a solid-flywheel conversion kit exists and would suit how you use the vehicle, that option gets mentioned too, along with what it changes about how the car drives.

What the job includes

• Three-piece kit as standard — clutch plate, pressure plate and release bearing, from a known manufacturer. Not a cheap two-piece with the old bearing reused.
• Concentric slave cylinder replaced where it sits inside the bellhousing. On those designs the part is inaccessible with the box in. Reusing it to save £60 means removing the gearbox again when it leaks.
• Crank rear seal and spigot bearing checked. A weeping rear main seal will contaminate a new clutch plate with oil and it will slip within months.
• Hydraulics bled properly and the pedal set up. Air in a clutch line gives you a soft pedal and a clutch that never fully releases.
• Gearbox oil checked and topped or replaced. It is drained on a lot of designs when the box comes off. It goes back with the right oil, not whatever is on the shelf.

Vans and commercials

Van clutches take a harder life than car clutches — loaded, stop-start, often towing — and they are heavier to handle. Transits, Sprinters, Transporters, Vivaros and Dailies are all regular work here. Because a van off the road is lost income, commercial clutch jobs get priority booking and Erdi will tell you honestly at the point of quoting how long he needs it for. See vans and fleet maintenance.

What it costs, and why it is less here

A clutch is mostly labour — typically six to ten hours depending on the vehicle. At £60 an hour rather than a dealer's £120 to £180, that is where the saving comes from. Same kit, same care, several hundred pounds' difference. Full breakdown on the pricing page.