Re. Loose ball bearings by flywheel?

[Ben Swann]

Mike,

It sounds like you had the same thing happen as I had a few years back.  Essentially the
clutch release bearing (aka throwaout bearing) disintegrated.  The shrapnel took out one
or more pins with it.  After the tow home, I took the opportunity presented to replace
clutch, disk, pressure plate, resurface flywheel, and slave cylinder, among assundry
other cleanup and improvement tasks.  I decided to pull the engine, since there were
more "opportunities" by doing it this way.  Those included, new turbo, wiring cleanup,
and a good engine going over - timing belt, etc.

Had the car needed suspension work that I had already completed, I would have likely
dropped the trans instead.  Six one way - half dozen the other.

Have fun and address all the things now you don't want to go back and do later, and then
some for good measure.

Ben

[Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:43:33 -0400
From: Mike <xthejuicex at gmail.com>
Subject: Loose ball bearings by flywheel?
To: 200q20v at audifans.com
Message-ID:
	<592a96020909271443v245e5013i70d1810ef51b12da at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hey everyone. I was checking out to see if the cps pin on my flywheel was broken and
when I pulled out the starter to look through the hole at the flywheel, these small
metal balls came out. They had grease on them and when I poked around inside i could see
and feel some small sharp pieces of metal.
Did some bearing explode or something? Here is a pic of the balls and are next to a
lighter for reference. http://i38.tinypic.com/2yum6md.jpg . BTW the car won't start but
would crank over and get fuel.

Thanks

Mike]