Easy Do-it-yourself Car Repair
The car started showing symptoms about seven months before it finally died. One day I depressed the clutch pedal and heard a grinding noise and felt the pedal lightly vibrate. Meanwhile, the car resisted being shifted into neutral. After five or ten seconds, the rattling and vibration stopped, and everything felt perfectly normal.
This problem repeated intermittently, with a very gradual increase in frequency. It was irregular enough that we could never get a mechanic to reproduce the problem. For many months and thousands of miles, the poor car kept going, but we knew that it would eventually die. Not wanting to be stranded in the desert, we borrowed Linda's car to drive to Los Angeles for Christmas. When we got home and exchanged cars, the problem hit again, this time making the car stall at an intersection half a mile from home. After a struggle, the engine finally started and even let me shift into third gear. As we started to turn into the parking lot, I tried to shift into second but instead had to go to neutral and coast in. The car has never driven since.
Linda's husband, Tyler, generously offered to work on the car, so we towed it to their place. Yesterday we had fun ripping it apart, supporting the engine on a pair of stands, and literally dropping the transaxle (with a thud). The most involved work I had ever done previously was to replace a wheel stud.
After removing the transaxle (which accounts for the gaping hole in the above picture), we exposed the clutch, and I proposed a theory as to what might be causing the problem.
"I don't think that piece of metal is supposed to be sticking through the clutch," I suggested. Tyler was impressed by my amazing diagnostic skills.
The piece of metal turned out to be the end of a disfigured spring from the clutch disc.
Apparently the spring would occasionally scrape against the clutch, causing the grinding noise and vibration. Months of this would explain the shiny groove on the inside of the clutch.
Eventually the spring slipped completely through, making it impossible for the clutch to disengage. I'm impressed that it took seven months for this to happen.
Now all we have to do is put a new clutch in, magically lift the transaxle into place, and put the rest of the car back together. And to think that some people pay hundreds of dollars in labor for such a simple repair. :)
This problem repeated intermittently, with a very gradual increase in frequency. It was irregular enough that we could never get a mechanic to reproduce the problem. For many months and thousands of miles, the poor car kept going, but we knew that it would eventually die. Not wanting to be stranded in the desert, we borrowed Linda's car to drive to Los Angeles for Christmas. When we got home and exchanged cars, the problem hit again, this time making the car stall at an intersection half a mile from home. After a struggle, the engine finally started and even let me shift into third gear. As we started to turn into the parking lot, I tried to shift into second but instead had to go to neutral and coast in. The car has never driven since.
Linda's husband, Tyler, generously offered to work on the car, so we towed it to their place. Yesterday we had fun ripping it apart, supporting the engine on a pair of stands, and literally dropping the transaxle (with a thud). The most involved work I had ever done previously was to replace a wheel stud.
The piece of metal turned out to be the end of a disfigured spring from the clutch disc.
Now all we have to do is put a new clutch in, magically lift the transaxle into place, and put the rest of the car back together. And to think that some people pay hundreds of dollars in labor for such a simple repair. :)
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