Well, I have been on spring break for the past week, and I spent the week visiting my girlfriend in Memphis. While making the 10 hour drive back to NC yesterday, my clutch finally decided to crap out on me. Luckily it didn't completely fail, and once I was at interstate speeds and not needing to shift it was ok, so I made it back to NC without much of a problem. Over the past week, the throw-out bearing had developed a noise - a slight rough sounding noise. Everything still worked fine, and I figured that I would just need to see about getting the car into the shop to have the clutch replaced at my leisure once returning to NC. Well, when I had to come to a stop for a traffic jam in Nashville 3 hours into my trip, a pushed in the clutch to be greeted by a vibrating clutch pedal and a nails on chalkboard screeching sound. It was warm, and many people had their windows down. I immediately attracted the attention of every car within half a mile of myself. Well, the clutch began to feel very weird and started to stick, emitting the loud constant screeching sound whenever I pushed the clutch pedal down. Now, it would be my luck that my clutch would start failing on me as I am stuck in a creep 5 feet, stop, creep 5 feet, stop, creep 5 feet traffic jam. Not the best on the clutch. After I got out of the jam and got moving again, the clutch began slipping while acclerating. Luckily, I found that once I got up to about 70-80 mph, the clutch seemed to hold pretty well and I could drive and acclerate without the clutch slipping.
I stopped for gas on the east side of Nashville, and the clutch was feeling really bad. I began to wonder if I was going to make it home. I had to stop again for dinner and gas in Asheville, and the clutch was even worse. It felt like the pressure plate was coming apart - I think some of the "fingers" that the throwout bearing pushes against had become loose and were flopping around in there, hitting the throwout bearing. Now, the throwout bearing was making noise even with my foot off the clutch. The clutch was now slow to disengage with the pedal pushed and slow to reengage with the pedal released. At this point I'm praying that the clutch doesn't explode on me and that it will actually disengage when I get off the interstate at my home.
I made it home and between lectures today, made calls to see if I could get it into a shop to have the clutch replaced. Many places said they couldn't get to it until late in the week, which is not good since I don't have another car here. I finally found an independent european car shop that said I could drop the car off at their shop late this afternoon, and they would work on the car tomorrow and have it done (provided there are no unforeseen problems) by tomorrow afternoon. Best of all, they only want $245 for labor and $250 plus tax for parts. I'd have $250 easy in parts to do it myself, and it's definitely worth it in my book to pay someone $245 labor for this big job (everyone told me it's a 6 hour job).
So, right now, I'm carless. Hopefully everything will go well and I'll have a brand spanking new clutch tomorrow.
I stopped for gas on the east side of Nashville, and the clutch was feeling really bad. I began to wonder if I was going to make it home. I had to stop again for dinner and gas in Asheville, and the clutch was even worse. It felt like the pressure plate was coming apart - I think some of the "fingers" that the throwout bearing pushes against had become loose and were flopping around in there, hitting the throwout bearing. Now, the throwout bearing was making noise even with my foot off the clutch. The clutch was now slow to disengage with the pedal pushed and slow to reengage with the pedal released. At this point I'm praying that the clutch doesn't explode on me and that it will actually disengage when I get off the interstate at my home.
I made it home and between lectures today, made calls to see if I could get it into a shop to have the clutch replaced. Many places said they couldn't get to it until late in the week, which is not good since I don't have another car here. I finally found an independent european car shop that said I could drop the car off at their shop late this afternoon, and they would work on the car tomorrow and have it done (provided there are no unforeseen problems) by tomorrow afternoon. Best of all, they only want $245 for labor and $250 plus tax for parts. I'd have $250 easy in parts to do it myself, and it's definitely worth it in my book to pay someone $245 labor for this big job (everyone told me it's a 6 hour job).
So, right now, I'm carless. Hopefully everything will go well and I'll have a brand spanking new clutch tomorrow.
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![[:p]](/images/smilies/tongue.png "Stick Out Tongue [:p]")
He showed me the old clutch today. Amazingly, the thing still had material left on the clutch disc! However, the pressure plate was destroyed. Half of the pressure plate fingers were broken right off! ![[:0]](/images/smilies/icon_smile_shock.gif "Shocked [:0]"){kind=icon}
I'm amazed the thing even still worked to get me home from Memphis last weekend. All in all, it ended up costing me $614 in the end. The labor to remove and reinstall the flywheel and the additional parts I needed, along with tax, bumped the estimated price up from about $500. Oh well, every other place I called wanted $630 or more just for the base clutch job. I still came out cheaper even with the added parts.