clutch slipping

[pheno]

Clutch is not holding for example when driving at 80km/h with 5th and pressing gas pedal to the floor. Can the clutch be adjusted in some way or do I need new disc and pressure plate? I'm thinking IF the reason for slipping could be that the pressure plate is not pressed fully when the clutch pedal is up. Is this possible ?

[Jon K]

New disc and pressure plate along with throwout bearing and might need to surface the flywheel and or get a new flywheel. There is no adjustment.

[pheno]

Thanks for very fast answer!

[bbig119]

Clutch is not holding for example when driving at 80km/h with 5th and pressing gas pedal to the floor. Can the clutch be adjusted in some way or do I need new disc and pressure plate? I'm thinking IF the reason for slipping could be that the pressure plate is not pressed fully when the clutch pedal is up. Is this possible ?


Don't drive on it if you want any hope of reusing the flywheel. It is my understanding that the dualmass flywheels that the V8s use are not usually resurfaced. I drove with mine slipping for a couple weeks until I was able to get it to the shop and had to shell out an extra $800 on a new flywheel on top of an already pricey clutch job. Its recommended that you replace the flywheel with the clutch, but if its in good condition you could take the chance of reusing it(that's what I was told until the shop got my tranny apart and saw the crappy condition of mine).

Good luck with it.

[pheno]

Don't drive on it if you want any hope of reusing the flywheel. It is my understanding that the dualmass flywheels that the V8s use are not usually resurfaced. I drove with mine slipping for a couple weeks until I was able to get it to the shop and had to shell out an extra $800 on a new flywheel on top of an already pricey clutch job. Its recommended that you replace the flywheel with the clutch, but if its in good condition you could take the chance of reusing it(that's what I was told until the shop got my tranny apart and saw the crappy condition of mine).

Good luck with it.

Thanks. I still can drive without slipping. Only I have to watch for pressing pedal hard with big gears/low rpm. I don't know how to check for bad/broken flywheel in this case.

What are the usual signs of flywheel that can not be reused ?

[pheno]

Clutch is not holding for example when driving at 80km/h with 5th and pressing gas pedal to the floor. Can the clutch be adjusted in some way or do I need new disc and pressure plate? I'm thinking IF the reason for slipping could be that the pressure plate is not pressed fully when the clutch pedal is up. Is this possible ?

Replying to myself. Actually the clutch doesn't slip anymore !!

Did some pressing up/down on the clutch pedal for some time and when I stopped doing that I immediately felt that the pedal is higher than before (maybe a few inches) and pedal was much stiffer to press down.
SO, what the heck had happened before ? Only thing I can imagine is that earlier pressure plate was not fully pressed when pedal was up and now it's fully pressed correctly like it should? This seems somewhat reasonable because this quite big slipping started all of a sudden.

[Ferret]

Replying to myself. Actually the clutch doesn't slip anymore !!

Did some pressing up/down on the clutch pedal for some time and when I stopped doing that I immediately felt that the pedal is higher than before (maybe a few inches) and pedal was much stiffer to press down.
SO, what the heck had happened before ? Only thing I can imagine is that earlier pressure plate was not fully pressed when pedal was up and now it's fully pressed correctly like it should? This seems somewhat reasonable because this quite big slipping started all of a sudden.

The clutch mechanism is self closing, there's massively powerful springs in the pressure plate unit. Your pedal works on a set of release fingers through a release bearing...

A sudden shift in clutch behaviour usually signifies one of three things:
1) Your friction disk is on its way out
2) Your release bearing has failed
which is usually followed by a nasty noise and:
Destroyed release fingers on the pressure plate.
3) Clutch cable fault

I'm quite surprised that the bimmers need to have their flywheel & friction plate renewed with the friction disk - most manual cars only ever need their friction disk + bearing done...

Though, It might be understandable due to the colossal power the bimmers have...

[Sidney Rough-Diamond]

Try bleeding the fluid before paying out for a clutch.

[pheno]

Try bleeding the fluid before paying out for a clutch.

But that would only affect on releasing the clutch, would it ?

[Derek A.]

There are a number of factors that could attribute to clutch slippage. I had very similar circumstances and my problem was a bad rear main seal. It doused the clutch in engine oil. It would occasionally slip in 5th on the freeway. If I was really hard on the car - lots of stop and go - it would slip more in lower gears.

There is really nothing aside from a mechanical defect in the pedal - that was not allowing full release to happen.