6 speed clutch replacement

damon_sisk

Member
Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Location
Charlestown, IN.
TDI
2001 Jetta GLS
After driving my 2001 TDI Jetta for about 15 years I bought a 2015 Passat TDI SE. The clutch went out about 4 weeks ago and it turned out that they friction plate had failed such that the friction material on one side had fallen off. The slave cylinder failed as well.
I did not know that Sachs and Luk clutches were incompatible and ordered a Luk kit that included the pressure plate friction plate and slave cylinder. Of course the pressure plate did not fit on my Sachs DMF flywheel, and I ended up having the original pressure plate and flywheel ground and the friction plate rebuilt. The shop that did it is called Kentucky clutch and they seemed extremely competent and the parts looked great when I got them back. They reset the self-adjusting pressure plate as well.
Reinstallation of everything went very smooth but I had to use the slave cylinder from the Luk kit. Now though I think I have completely bleed the system, the clutch will not fully disengage. I suspect that the slave cylinder stroke length is too short and is designed for the Luk clutch.

Can anyone confirm or deny my suspicion?

I hate to take it apart again if that is not the problem.

Also a crazy idea I had was to only slightly separate the engine and transmission to remove the gasket between the two hoping that would put the slave a little closer to the clutch and perhaps allow disengagement when the pedal is on the floor. I seriously doubt this would provide enough extra stroke though, but right now the pedal does separate the clutch enough that the engine can keep running while the transmission is in gear and the clutch is depressed, even though it's obvious it is loading the engine.
Any sage advice?
 
Last edited:

NSTDI

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 26, 2002
Location
Nova Scotia
TDI
15 Passat
No experience directly but mostly drive clutch cars. I’d suggest you bleed it again, maybe twice. Have you asked Luk for the spec on their parts to see if they are compatible/same spec?
 

oilhammer

Certified Volkswagen Nut & Vendor
Joined
Dec 11, 2001
Location
outside St Louis, MO
TDI
There are just too many to list....
I would never go through all that work and not replace everything in there with a matched set of pieces NEW.

I think you need to take it back apart. You can *usually* get the OEM brand by VIN from the dealer, but it is not 100% reliable on these. Also, if you are doing it properly, you can replace the whole shebang with "the other" brand and it will all work fine. Just cannot mix 'n match parts.

However, the SLAVE cylinder has only one choice... regardless of whose DMF/clutch it has. So that isn't your problem.
 

damon_sisk

Member
Joined
Sep 3, 2007
Location
Charlestown, IN.
TDI
2001 Jetta GLS
I took oilhammer's advice and disassembled the transmission from the engine again. The rebuilt Sachs pressure plate had been spot welded in 3 places by the company that rebuilt it such that it was all the way out (minimum force on friction plate) and would never increase position as the friction material would wear. It's odd that even with the slave cylinder bled the clutch still would not fully release. I think the issue is that the springs on the Sachs pressure plate were somehow damaged or perhaps bent when the old friction plate failed. Maybe there was some other damage to the pressure plate; who knows.

So I ordered a new LUK DMF to go with the LUK pressure plate and friction plate. I had to get creative to compress the pressure plate, but a 3-jaw gear puller and on old bathtub drain fixture allowed me to compress the springs on the pressure plate so I could install it to the flywheel without it self-adjusting. Since my setup blocked use of the alignment tool, I put 3 toothpicks between the round sheet metal cutout feature on the pressure plate and the hub on the friction plate in order to center the friction plate relative to the pressure plate. Note this cannot be done with the Sachs pressure plate because there is no round sheet metal cutout near the spring fingers on that pressure plate like there is on the LUK (google photos, it will make sense!)

But the BIGGEST advantage was when I decided to bleed the slave cylinder ON the transmission BEFORE I installed the transmission to the engine. See two videos below explaining this part.



It works great now! Thank you both for the help! :)
 
Top