One couldnt think of this by oneself...

[Renze]

I bought another Volvo 1.9 liter turbodiesel car in March because my previous one (exactly the same 1995 440 TuboDiesel) jerked out some transmission bolts and as a result, broke a piece out of the aluminium clutch housing around the three remaining bolts.... A cause of failure just sounding dumb...

Now my last 440 TD was starting to whine in the transmission (336.000 km on rebuilt tranny) which caused me worries last week. I replaced the transmission mount rubber from that of the wrecker, to stop the engine from slopping in its rubbermounts when playing wih the throttle.
doing so, i found that the left wheel arm was greasy. Taking a closer look, i discovered a big rust bubble under the paint of the pressed steel pan that covers the side wall of the transmission.
When taking it off and wire brushing it, i found a whole regiment of tiny little rust holes in it, causing to leak away 90% of my gear oil... The transmission luckily, was still wet/greasy on the gears, and flushing it out with diesel didnt bring out any metal filings... I put new 80w/90 API GL3/4/5 fully synthetic high performance oil in it, and the transmission is getting more and more quiet every kilometer i drove today...

Discovering this leak on time, saved me a 950 Euro transmission rebuild, plus 1,5 days of work exchangeing it...

I was just thinking, i must have very bad luck with cars in general, and if you told me last week, that a little rust would allmost cause me this major breakdown, i'd said that this was something not going to happen in the real world... it just sounds so odd that i couldnt think of it myself...

I'm just happy that (hopefully) i was right on time discovering this leak and having a spare replcement in the yard....

 

[RobS]

Your story reminds me of a similar experience. Car was a 1986 VW Jetta GLI. Pushed the clutch pedal down one day and it stayed. Limped home by careful shifting without the clutch. I assumed there was a problem with the clutch release lever so I set out to remove the trans.

All went well enough, though it wasn't an easy job as I recall. Got into the clutch and all the pieces seemed fine. Even the disc was in reasonably good shape. I'm scratching my head now.

Further examination revealed the long clutch release shaft that runs the length of the transmission, right down the middle of the main drive. Odd arrangement, but kind of neat. OK, now I figure the shaft has worn or something. After all, the cable was working just fine.

Found a new shaft after much searching. Imagine, it matched the old one perfectly so no culprit there. FINALLY, I took off the end cap to the transmission and found a small cam that had cracked. Cheap part and easy to replace. Got it all back together and at that point realized I could have replaced it without pulling the trans at all.

Fun car, but several similar frustrations begged me to sell it

 

[Renze]

Yes i have some minor problems with cars that i have to fix... Anyways that's what you get when buying old cars for cheap... you can drive for the cost of an apple and an egg if you're lucky, or have to buy another one within a few months...
anyways, if i fold my car around a tree, the 1400 Euro Volvo will be worth just as much as my sister in laws 8000 Euro Toyota Corolla... the scrap price of 14 Eurocents per kilo... But in case of crash, i'd rather be in the Volvo than the rice burner, just saw what happened to my friend's 1995 Honda CRX two months ago when it hit a tree...

 

[Highbeam]

Ah yes the hokey VW clutch setup. The pressure plate actually bolted to the crankshaft and the flywheel spring clamped to that. The funky fuel injection system was actually very good for a mechanical system with no o2 sensors.

 

[Renze]

Oh, maybe some wanted to know this:

I drove the old volvo with broken bellhousing for another week by holding the two halves of bellhousing together with some rings welded to a threaded rod, the rings were put between the bolts that were still o.k. and the threaded rod was used to pull things together...

After that, i put up an earth wall with the front loader and went jumping over it at 70 km/h.... That volvo, after about 20 jumps in one saturday, ripped off its motor mount rubber, lost both rear and front bumper, and the front wheel suspension on the left side had moved an inch back... it was still driveable..

then just think, the Dukes of Hazzard filmcrew used 3 custom prepared Chargers a day if they were doing some jumps... The volvo's durability was not bad for a 1033 kg front wheel drive car...

Please see attached photos

 

[Renze]

Another two pictures:
one of the broken engine suspension rubber (not only the engine popped up, i got a sore back and a friend got a sore neck from being skyrocketed into the car's roof...

other photo is a friend of mine posing in front of his victim...

 

[dbdartman]

Renze, I hope someone let out a good, loud, "YEE-HAWWWWWWW!!!!!!" Automotive destruction is FUN!

I had a '78 Ford F-100 that had it's share of clutch trouble... One time, the left side mount broke & the clutch link to the clutch fork dropped out. I was only a few miles from home & got it home without too much trouble flat-shifting. After replacing the broken mount, all was well for about a year, then a friend & I went to Manhatten for no reason. In the middle of NYC, at about 4PM, the mount for the clutch fork, inside the bell housing, popped out of the bell housing. Blankity-blank thing was RIVITED in! Getting out of Manhatten, through the Holland tunnel, during rush-hour, with no clutch wasn't ANY fun at all! I ended up bolting the mount back to the bell housing using a pair of 1/4-24 grade-8 bolts & lock nuts. 100K miles later when I got rid of the truck, it still worked!

 

[czechsonofagun]

I lost push rod from clutch linkage on my Jeep CJ7 - it was like a mile from home, no biggy. But to fix it, I used steering rods from an old Sears riding mower - it still works like a charm

There is a reason for all that junk I save.

 

[Renze]

dbdartman, we were rolling over the ground of laughing when we made the first serious jump at max speed we could get on that street behind the riding hall...

Just as much fun was toasting my brother's Ford Sierra 1.8 turbo diesel... that thing leaked oil around the turbo, and could run away on the highway all of a sudden, with big clouds of blue smoke behind it... It happened a few days in the last week i drove to work with it, every time on the same road, when you had to use the brake to kill the engine, and start it again after a minute or so. I was very sorry that it didnt happen just that single day of the last week that this car was on the road, when a police motorcycle was riding behind me... I'd love to put him in smoke and say "sorry officer, couldnt help it"

Anyways, we made 2 or three rounds through the paddock before the clouds of smoke came, the oil pressure dropped and the camshaft began to nail. The last noise it made, were some pops that sounded like a little fart underwater.



Anyways, never let the fun get in the way of your safety: The guy on the picture, is the one that crashed the CRX on a tree, after a 13 hour night shift and falling asleep on the way home at 6 in the morning. He now lost control of his right arm..... He's in our prayers when he goes to the neural surgeon on july 11, hope they can "plug back in" the nerve cords that were damaged when his arm slung forward at moment of crash...

Off course this accident was not his own fault, but a little mistake can have bad results...

 

[Jagmandave]

Your story reminds me of a similar experience. Car was a 1986 VW Jetta GLI. Pushed the clutch pedal down one day and it stayed. Limped home by careful shifting without the clutch. I assumed there was a problem with the clutch release lever so I set out to remove the trans.

All went well enough, though it wasn't an easy job as I recall. Got into the clutch and all the pieces seemed fine. Even the disc was in reasonably good shape. I'm scratching my head now.

Further examination revealed the long clutch release shaft that runs the length of the transmission, right down the middle of the main drive. Odd arrangement, but kind of neat. OK, now I figure the shaft has worn or something. After all, the cable was working just fine.

Found a new shaft after much searching. Imagine, it matched the old one perfectly so no culprit there. FINALLY, I took off the end cap to the transmission and found a small cam that had cracked. Cheap part and easy to replace. Got it all back together and at that point realized I could have replaced it without pulling the trans at all.

Fun car, but several similar frustrations begged me to sell it

Man, I had the exact same experience with my 86 Jetta, complete with replacing the clutch, the cable, and the long rod running thru the trans, till I finally pulled the trans yet again and found that cam cracked and turning on the clutch shaft. Unbelievable!