Impending Clucth Failure?

[Brett Dikeman]

At 9:42 PM -0400 5/29/03, Bryan Foster wrote:
>Listers,
>I have recently noticed a whining (whirring) sound that is RPM dependent
>only when I
>depress the clutch.  It disappears when the clutch is let out, in neutral
>or in gear.  It is even pretty loud when you place your foot on the pedal
>with light pressure, before the clutch is disengaged.  Also the pedal
>seems to vibrate alot.  Is this a throwout bearing failure? What does that
>mean?

Vibration could mean one of the fingers broke- that happened on my
clutch.  Pulled into the driveway, slipped into neutral as I coasted
the last few feet, and as I let my foot up, the pedal started
vibrating violently.  Oh, and it didn't come up all the way :-)  I
got a peek of the old clutch, and it was missing a few fingers.
Doesn't matter exactly what it is- something in there isn't happy,
the tranny's gotta come out.


>How much $$ am I looking at to have the clutch replaced by a shop?

It's an expensive job- it is labor intensive.  The later S-cars
aren't any better.  Tim from Northern European was treating his UrS4
clutch very gently at the drag strip last summer- "I do NOT want to
have to do a clutch job on this car..."


>  Any good clutch places in Boston?

Any competent Audi independent shop should be able to do it just
fine- I don't think there's much that is 200q20v-specific.  The
driveshaft has to be treated gently(Bently lists 'the rules'), and,
there's more exhaust plumbing in the way :-)

   Oh, and the TENS system needs to get put back together right(but
that's not 200q20v specific, just late-type 44 specific) which isn't
hard, but you need to stress to the mechanic that he make sure he
doesn't forget- that cable HAS to be behind the space for it on the
transmission, or the system simply won't work- ie, no seatbelt
tensioners.  Interestingly enough, my mechanic found the TENS system
cable tie-wrapped to the firewall when he did the clutch- he also
found a couple of wires to stuff on the tranny had been spliced for
some unknown reason- we never figured that one out.

Though I'm sure Bernie will disagree- any seals and bearings that are
easily accessible with the tranny dropped should be changed without
question, given how little they cost(seals are generally well under
$20) and how much it costs to get back in there.  Oh, it's also as
good a time as any to change the fluid on both tranny and diff.

After some informal net research a few months ago and talking with a
few shops, I'd say go with stock VW/Audi synthetic tranny fluid.

Brett
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