Loose ball bearings by flywheel?

[Ben Swann]

Those are definitely ball bearings from the clutch release bearing!

Mine did make a lot of noise, and even noticed some clutch issues prior to the bearing
exploding and I had been deferring this maintenance - bad boy!  But really I was getting
ready to do the job, and the disintegrated bearing, etc. got me to it a little quicker.

You will need to have new pin(s) installed in the flywheel, or simply replace it.

Ben

[From: Tony Hoffman <auditony at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Loose ball bearings by flywheel?
To: Mike <xthejuicex at gmail.com>
Cc: 200q20v at audifans.com
Message-ID:
	<7bd5cbf00909280255v54c0dfcdq478fb9b58c3511f6 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Hmm, that's a bit of a stumper. They look like the input shaft bearings, but you would
have definately heard the noise before it fell apart like that. And, I seem to recall
them being bigger than that.

Tony Hoffman

On Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Mike <xthejuicex at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.]