[Vwdiesel] Clutch Noise Problem

[Gavrik Peterson]

Late this summer I posted some questions about my 1.6 liter VW diesel
Rabbit engine which had developed a leak across the head gasket.
Recently I had this engine rebuilt and am now about to reinstall it.
I am concerned about getting the clutch right.

When I installed this clutch it was fine for a while and then started
to make a noise.  The noise was a low growl that occurred when the
pedal is being depressed.  If the pedal is fully up, no sound is
emitted.  I don't remember if it made any noise when the pedal was
fully depressed.  Operating the clutch when the engine is not running
makes no noise.   Otherwise the clutch worked ok.

The components that were used are:

(1) Original flywheel (200mm) which had around 130k miles on it.

(2) New pressure plate (Sachs TYPM190X/M200X)

(3) New driven plate (Sachs 112-52080)

(4) New release plate

The interface between the pressure plate springs and the release plate
were lubricated with a small amount of heavy moly grease.

Now the flywheel has 170k miles on it.  The wear surface looks very
good and still shows some of the machining marks.  The other
components show low wear.

I tried to check the runout on the drive plate, but my setup is too
crude.  Tomorrow I will take it somewhere.  The reason I want to check
this is I thought I might have distorted it when installing or
removing the transaxel.  Is this a frequent problem?

Anyone have any idea what might be going on with all this?  Could
there be something I need to check that has escaped me?


Gavrik Peterson
Seattle