Doblo clutch misery

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Heres a tale that will appeal to shite spanner twirlers.

 

Decided to fit a new clutch in my Doblo van this weekend as I'm driving it to France next week and if I manage to enlarge the size of my plums 40-fold I'm going to hopefully A-frame home a serious lump of shite with it.

 

 

Got a new clutch kit from Euro car parts, £90. I had visions of getting it all to bits to find they had given me the wrong parts (the usual scenario) but that didnt happen fortunately. Most other stuff went wrong though.

 

 

Its actually not too bad a job in theory, a lot more straightforward than a Mk4 Astra! No subframes or owt to come out and I am lucky enough to have one of these support beam thingys which are quite helpful on clutch jobs.

 

 

i actually got it all to pieces in about an hour and a half which was amazing, at that point it all started to go wrong. So wrong that i gave up on the pics as i was getting too stressed. Heres the sequence of events from this point.

 

1) Attempt to refit gearbox.

2) spend approx 45 mins lying on my back trying to get the flipping box to engage on the spline and mate up to the engine. i got it as far as getting 2 bellhousing bolts in but it would not go the last inch even with them quite tight so in the end I dropped it back out again.

3) inspect the clutch for 'centrality', decide its fine and have another crack at fitting the box.

4) after 10 mins of swearing it goes 'click' and slots on. BO SELECTA!

5) Start doing up the bellhousing bolts, then spot the thrust bearing still on the garage floor.

6) Drop the box again, crying.

7) Fit the thrust brg then attempt to fit the box a third time, this time after about 10 mins my arms turned to jelly and I couldn't lift the damn thing anymore, just don't have the strength. Admittedly I'd eaten a only poached egg on toast all day, not a great diet for hardcore mechanicking.

rig up some sling thing on the engine crane and lift the box in

9) wrestle on for 10 mins, then the box clicks home.

10) start reattaching stuff.

11) attempt to refit the NS driveshaft. It has swung down while the box was out. I got it out in the first place by swinging the hub outwards after disconnecting the strut from the hub. That does not give enough 'outwards movement' to get the shaft back into the box, so i have to now take the hub right off.

12) undo the nut off the lower balljoint. About halfway out it gets mega stiff and the taper pops free with the nut still stuck on the thread. Now i can't get the nut off no matter what I do, couldn't jam the taper again even with jacks under it and all sorts.

13) decide to grind the nut off.

14) successfully grind the nut off, but make a hole in the outer CV boot with the grinder. Brilliant.

15) remove the shaft completely and decide to fit a new CV boot from my garage mara's stash.

16) establish that the only way to get a new outer boot on the shaft, is to remove the inner joint and boot and slide the new outer boot along the shaft. The inner boot is some odd arrangement with an integral bearing (the boot stays still and the shaft spins within it as you drive)

17) Remove the inner boot from the shaft, damaging the bearing in the process. MUTHAFUCKA!

18) fit the new outer boot.

19) fit the old damaged inner boot as i have no spare for that.

20) refit the driveshaft and continue reassembling the van.

21) fill the gearbox with oil, inevitably finding that oil pisses out of the now-damaged inner boot.

22) Get the van back on its wheels at 10 pm (started at 1pm) and drive home leaving splats of oil everywhere i go.

23) order a new innner boot from euro car parts the next day (Monday). Discover on collecting it its totally unsuitable.

24) order a new inner boot from CES the next day (Tuesday). FORTY QUID FOR A CV BOOT.

25) dismantle the driveshaft again tuesday night, fit the new inner boot, reassemble, notice there is now a hole in the boot over the lower balljoint (now an MOT fail).

26) ignore it and drive home vowing to sack off these old motors and get a VW Phaeton TDi.

 

 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Oh forgot to mention, the old clutch still had loads of life in it when i got it to bits, I had just been overly paranoid.

[cobblers]

sounds like you've got a case of "Cobblers Luck" on that job, especially down to the old clutch kicking you in the teeth with its serviceability.

[Alexg]

I'm sure a beer went down well after that. Did you manage to keep your cool, or did you launch your trolley jack at the windscreen whilst calling everyone and everything a **** ***** ****, etc?

[skattrd]

I feel your pain.

 

12 months after changing the clutch (that didn't really need doing) on my bora I've still not got a consistently good gear change. In the meantime all of the clutch hydraulics have been changed, as has the gear linkage. Next to be done is the flywheel, I'll be doing that in 2 weeks ... I wish I'd just left it until it went pop.

[cort16]

harsh times. I recon that job would take me 2 years and a 6 week spell in a mental institution.

[dollywobbler]

Ugh. The sort of job the DIY tinkerer dreads. There must be a knack to mating gearboxes and engines, but I certainly don't know what it is. Sometimes they click together like buttered bread and carpet and other times it's just IMPOSSIBLE.

[HillmanImp]

That's a great read. Its good to see bad shit happen to someone else. Other peoples misery is what the interweb was made for. 

[greengartside]

I once had a '93 Disastra 1.4 MPi - the clutch was completely cattled on it so I bought another clutch kit and decided to bite the bullet and do it myself to save a bit of cash.

 

Imagine my surprise when Vauxhall had kindly put an inspection plate on the side of the gearbox which meant that I could undo the clutch bolts through the gap left and remove/replace the clutch without touching the gearbox! Job done in less than an hour.

[Pillock]

After changing the box on my Golf, I managed to leave the driveshaft on the floor, didn't notice until I'd wiggled and jiggled it for hours on my own to get it on the splines. No kit for pulling the hub off, so the box had to come back off, tie the shaft to something higher up, box back on.

 

Instead of that nice support bar, I used a length of rope round my neck to support the box leaving two hands free to jiggle.

[dieselnutjob]

reminds me of the first time (well actually second time as well..) that I did a clutch on the wife's 806.

 

I spend ages clearing out the garage, and getting the 806 in there.  It's almost impossible because the access road is only just wider than the car so turning the car 90 deg to reverse into the garage is a 38 point turn.

 

Got car in, and jacked it up, got it on axles stands and wheels off.

 

Went to pull bonnet release and the lever pulled but the bonnet didn't.

 

So put wheels back on and did another 38 point turn etc to driver to dealer to desperately seek advise.

 

Luckily the local Citroen dealers mechanic came out and said that it was just a case of ramming ones arm up from underneath, past the various hoses etc, loosing some blood and pulling the catch.  He was right.  He was also kind enough to pop the bonnet on another one in the yard so that I could see how it worked.

 

Second attempt.

 

Found that my Peugeot hub nut socket didn't fit because 806s seem to use a Fiat size.  Had to rush out and buy something and ground it down until it fitted.

 

Broke a gear selector rod (plastic) trying to pop the ball joint off the gearbox selector arm.  These things are virtually impossible to see or touch on an 806 because they are on the back of the gearbox which is under the windscreen.

 

New selector rods cost £120....

 

Forgot to degrease the new flywheel and had clutch judder for a while until that DMF packed up as well.

 

The second time I had to do it I physically ran out of strength trying to line up the input shaft and had to call a mate out to come and help lift.  At least I didn't break anything that time and this new clutch is holding up very nicely.

 

On an 806 you are supposed to drop the subframe but that mechanic I mentioned above is some kind of angel because his tip was to just loosen the front bolts and drop it an inch and then the gearbox will come out, which turned out to be solid gold advice.

[KruJoe]

FFS what a ball-ache. It's days like that which have made me swear never to work on other folks' cars for my living.

 

That support beam gadget looks well nifty - not seen one of them before.

[dieselnutjob]

first gearbox removal I ever did was my 305 GLD which didn't go that well.  it was coming out because synchro has gone on 3rd.

 

Like all modern pugs the long driveshaft is supported half way along by a bearing that runs through the lower engine mount (actually torque reaction link, but anyway).  You undo two little nuts that hold two funny bolt that clamp in the bearing, and the whole thing is supposed to slide out.

 

It would not even hammer out.

 

Then the tri joint inner drive shaft thing fell apart and I had needle bearings all over the floor.

 

In the end I had to cut through the dowels that locate the engine mount (link) thing onto the back of the block so that I could slide the drive shaft (what was left of it) out with the bearing and mount still attached and get it pressed out.  The way of cutting them was to hold a hack saw blade in my hand so that it cut my hand at the same time as the dowel....

 

It took several tons to press that bearing out which is odd because it's never happened to me since.

 

The same driveshaft went back in the car with most of the needle bearings put back, and survived another 160,000 miles until the car was scrapped.

[dieselnutjob]

my last clutch tale is when I offered to do a mates BX because it looked so similar to my 305s which by now I was a dab hand at.

 

I could do a 305 clutch by then in under four hours.

 

The BX took eight hours mostly because of those hydraulic pipes that run under the bell housing which a 305 doesn't have, and which just get in the way of everything.

[wackywacerwill]

Great stuff, I'd suspected that it wasn't just me who has this kind of shit and it's good to get that confirmed.

[barrett]

Hey, do you wanna do the clutch on my Herald? I reckon it would be like a 2 week holiday in St. Moritz after all that lot

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

I know this sort of thing - this 'old woman who swallowed a fly' spiralling jobs thing - has happened to me, but I can't remember any particular instance thanks to the human brain's excellent capacity for repressing traumatic memories. 

 

One day, many years from now, I'll break down and have a full on manic episode in a department store at Christmas triggered by the sound of a coin being thrown into a charity bucket or something. Everyone will stare and look awkward while I scream about spending half a day mating a gearbox with engine and then stepping on the forgotten spigot bush (Whoa, first memory unrepressed).

 

So about three minutes after finishing this, you'll think "that wasn't so bad, I could totally start a business called Mr Fiat Doblo Clutch". 

[Micrashed]

 

 

 

25) dismantle the driveshaft again tuesday night, fit the new inner boot, reassemble, notice there is now a hole in the boot over the lower balljoint (now an MOT fail).

 

Sikkaflex

I have "fixorated" a few CV boots with Sikkaflex which ave subsequently passed an MOT.

[Station]

I've only ever had engine-to-gearbox mating success once and that was when the engine and box was out of the car (it took 1 minute). I've spent a day trying to get the box up to the engine with all those locating dowels and bolts.

I also didn't put the clutch release fork in the box correctly and had to do the complete process three times. This was on a RWD Starion and was a Jesus Wept nightmare.

[nigel bickle]

Glad its not just me then - thought that was just my type of luck.

 

Arm muscles back yet Boll -or is it still a struggle to raise them high enough for a handshake?

 

Have a good trip . Take the spanners....

[Pillock]

Oh, and a VW T2 panel van with a Type4 engine, and automatic gearbox (which you're right in thinking was a pretty awful combination to start with). Those vans are, like, 15' long or something? Somehow the engine and box seemed to be linked with a 14' shaft - normally on an aircooled VW, you remove the four bolts between engine and box, take a few wires and hoses off, yank the engine off to the rear, and have a cup of tea. 

 

On this muthafugger, you yank the engine and then keep walking backwards with it. Seriously, we were actually out of the back of the van and it still had this shaft supporting the engine. Because we'd not expected this, we hadn't lined up any support mechanism so now we have a few hundred kilos of Type4 engine bouncing up and down on a once-perfectly-straight shaft.

 

Needless to say, when it did go back together with a new motor, this gearbox shaft was probably not quite as straight as VW intended and proceeded to smash the living hell out of the gearbox the first time it was driven. Didn't really make the van much slower to be honest.

[cort16]

 

ignore it and drive home vowing to sack off these old motors and get a VW Phaeton TDi.

 

I would like to see a VW Phaeton A-framing a talbot alpine up the M6

[Volksy]

I know your pain Mr Bol,

Every time i try and do any work on my nemesis - an 04 plate Polo - it ends up in misery like this.

[Pillock]

I would like to see a Talbot Alpine a-framing a Phaeton up the M6.

[garethj]

I think most people who have fixed old motors score well on their work appraisal for “determinationâ€Â.  Also “not being put off by setbacks†and of course “utterly failing to learn from your mistakes and buy a less-shagged carâ€Â, although that one only comes up on the more detailed annual appraisal.

 

If a V12 Phaeton went pop even in a minor way, you’d be looking back fondly on the days when a CV boot cost less than 3 figures.  The day it fails the MoT on emissions I reckon you’re on your knees in front of the bank manager, reaching for his zip as a minimum

 

Down to business – what are you bringing back?  And is there something you can take over there and sell, like a chod exchange programme?

[Sigmund Fraud]

Mr.B, I must say I admire your patience... I reckon I would have lasted until point 17 of your description, before reaching for the petrol can and matches.

 

I've been meaning to drop the gearbox of the 'Hairdresser special' to try and investigate an irritating clutch judder. After reading your post, I decided to leave well alone - 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and all that.

[mouseflakes]

Oh forgot to mention, the old clutch still had loads of life in it when i got it to bits, I had just been overly paranoid.

 

Arse bananas.

 

Looks like the yard was an inch deep in rain water at one point too  - nice.

 

Hope the trip goes well.

[overrun]

Removing the gearbox from the engine on my mates 2003ish Punto runaround, was a task.

 

All bolts and dowels out and clear, starter out etc. Yet the damn thing was just spinning on the input shaft.

 

When refitting, my mate was kind enough to drop the 'box on my face.

[Guest Tony Hayers]

I once had a '93 Disastra 1.4 MPi - the clutch was completely cattled on it so I bought another clutch kit and decided to bite the bullet and do it myself to save a bit of cash.

 

Imagine my surprise when Vauxhall had kindly put an inspection plate on the side of the gearbox which meant that I could undo the clutch bolts through the gap left and remove/replace the clutch without touching the gearbox! Job done in less than an hour.

 

I don't want to sound like Mr Thicky, but how did you get the clutch off the input shaft whilst the box was in situ? That inspection plate does sound like a good idea though, saving you the arsehole of removing the box just to inspect the friction plate. 

[CreepingJesus]

'Cos there's a cover on the gearbox endplate, which covers the mainshaft end bearing. When you take the cover off, you can pull the mainshaft out a couple of inches. Something like that - it's been a long time!