1. Home
  2. Volkswagen, everything else
  3. 1990 golf clutch weirdness. Help.

1990 golf clutch weirdness. Help.

Hi, I have a 1990 VW Golf (1.8L, gas) with 155,000 km (96,000 miles) with alot of this distance being highway driving. It has the original clutch. Recently I've noticed when starting from a stop, the car begins to move ahead just as I begin to let the clutch pedal up the tiniest bit. Before I had to let the clutch up about 1/3 or 1/2 the way up before the clutch would begin to engage and the car start to move. Now, the clutch begins to engage with the slightest movement up from the fully depressed position.

The other symptom when the clutch engages early is when I let the pedal up even more, the clutch engagement, is jerky, which suggests clutch slippage?

Now the weird part. At other times, the clutch works normally, engages when the pedal is 1/3 to 1/2 the way up, and engages smoothly. It seems this happens after I've driven a bit (and the mechanical parts gets warmed up?). Again, no obvious slippage.

Otherwise the clutch pedal moves up and down smoothly whether the problem shows up or not. And once the clutuch pedal is fully up, there is no slippage when accelerating. I drive the car pretty easy, easy starts from stops, no hard driving, easy on the clutch, easy on the engine.

Before I bring it into the (chick ding $$) dealer, does anyone have any ideas on what the problem might be? Anything that might be fixable without a clutch/transmission repair? Or at 155,000 km and after 14 years, have I just worn out the clutch?

Thanks. I looked for an archive of this newsgroup for previous posts. Any such thing?

-Tony

-------------------- twong(at)vcn.bc.ca Vancouver, BC Canada

Reply to
Tony
Loading thread data ...

Hi, I forgot to mention that the clutch cable is one of the self-adjusting ones.

-T>Hi,

-------------------- twong(at)vcn.bc.ca Vancouver, BC Canada

Reply to
Tony

Reply to
Randolph

the real test of clutch slippage is go about 30mph in a high-ish gear (enough that your engine revs kinda low but not so low that it bogs) and floor the gas pedal (up a light hill also will help in this test). if the engine revs climb is a disproportionate way to the speed of the car, it's slipping. if you get off the gas and the revs suddenly drop rather than smoothly coming down with the speed of the car, that's also further confirmation of it slipping.

Reply to
Matt B.

Hi Randolph and Matt, Thanks for the suggestions. I checked around the pedals and the bracket where the clutch cable mounts on the transaxle. Both seem sonud, no movement. Will check again in the light of day.

Will try the high-gear, rev test tomorrow also.

I recall that I used to be able to compress the spring inside the self-adjusting clutch cable, but no longer can I do that. Wonder if the adjuster is at it's extended limit--that's why the clutch engages so early, it's that it no longe fully disengages the clutch, but only partially.

-Tony

-------------------- twong(at)vcn.bc.ca Vancouver, BC Canada

Reply to
Tony

Hi, An update. I think I solved it. I replaced the self-adjusting clutch cable. With the old cable, I couldn't compress the spring anymore and I noticed I didn't have any pedal free play. I installed a new cable and things seem normal again. I have some pedal free play and the car doesn't creep ahead as soon as I let the clutch pedal up the slightest.

I took the old cable apart, loosened the inards, pushed it all back together, and it worked normally--I could compress the spring again. Wonder if the cable just failed and the adjusting mechanism got stuck in the fully shortened position.

On Matt's suggestion on a rev test. The rev test (3rd gear, 2000 RPM, then floor it) caused the engine RPM to slowly rise as speed increased. Seemed normal, no obvious slippage.

The Bentley manual suggested an slightly different rev test which I also tried: put parking brake on, inccrease engine RPM slightly above idle, put it in 3rd gear and slowly let the clutch out. Engine should stall immediately. If engine takes some time to stall or continuest to run with clutch out, clutch needs replacing. On my car, the engine stalled forthwith.

So I think I can defer a clutch job for a while.

-Tony '90 Golf, 155,000 km on original clutch

-------------------- twong(at)vcn.bc.ca Vancouver, BC Canada

Reply to
Tony

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.