airsport

So I put a toe under it and pull it back up. Now it won't go down. I have fluid in the master cylinder and didn't notice any leaking under the car.

Its on the flat bed and off to the dealer. I was just wondering if anyone has had this happen to them...?

Gernby

It sounds to me like either you have a defective pressure plate, or a bad slave cylinder. If the clutch is still engaged with the pedal to the floor, then I think it would be the slave cylinder.

Did you try pulling the clutch pedal back up?

airsport

I pulled the pedal back up and it will not go back down. This happend in an instant. It didn't feel like a broken hose but more like the release fork came off.

I get the feeling that the slave cylinder is now fully extended after I manualy pulled the clutch pedal up and that is why I can't push the pedal back down

Gernby

So was the clutch still engaged?

slalom44

It sounds like your throwout bearing fell apart. I've never heard of that happening before.

E30M3

Often the clutch pedal on the floor thing is caused by clutch master cylinder issues. The clutch master cylinder is located near the clutch pedal, while the clutch slave is located near the front of the tranny.

Stan

airsport

I don't know if the clutch is still engaged. I didn't check to see when I coasted into the parking lot in neutral... After looking at the service manual--it felt like the release fork broke.

It didn't make any noise before during or after the failure...

airsport

Update. The dealer got it up on the lift and had a look through the release fork boot. Anyway it look like the "release bearing" failed.

They are waiting till the clutch assembly arrives before taking the car apart. So I will be waiting till thursday to find out if they will warranty the job. I told the service manager that its pretty unlikely that I stepped on the clutch pedal to hard or too many times... The car has 14,000 miles and the clutch was working fine prior to the failure.

The dealer is an hour away and becuse of the lack of clarity on who will be responsible for payment I havn't gotten a loaner car... Looks like I will be out of a car for a week and if they are going to warranty the job--if they don't I'll be in small claims court--I will hit them up for credit on the rental they didn't supply.

slalom44

The "release bearing" is another name for the throwout bearing. Although it is unlikely you did anything to cause this, I should point out some things that affect the health of this bearing:

Riding the clutch, or even keeping the clutch depressed while stopped at lights will put excessive wear on the throwout bearing. Revving the engine with the clutch depressed, especially to very high RPMs can get this bearing quite hot, and enable it to fail prematurely. Stepping on the clutch hard or frequently is really not hard on this bearing - keeping it depressed for a long time is.

That being said, I find it hard to believe that even if you're hard on the throwout bearing, it would be unlikely to fail in such a short period of time. I hope the dealer covers the repairs. Good luck!!

xviper

Have you had a clutch job on this car? Like maybe the TSB for the buzz?
I recall a post here some time ago about an owner who had a clutch job and the mechanic did not grease the spindle that the release bearing rides on. This causes excessive wear and resulted in a lot of gravelly noise and ultimately led to a new clutch job.