Few months ago I bought a 2000 Jetta TDI GLS 5 speed. The clutch wouldn't disengage unless it was pushed all the way to the floor. Never worked on one of these, do I turned to this forum (and others) in search of answers. After about 2 weeks of driving it, I felt my break pedal go down, maybe 1/2 inch . After that, the clutch pedal felt normal. I could let it up a couple of inches and it would start to engage. The car had always shifted hard(before and after the change) I put some GM synchro fluid in the trans. That did help, but definitely didn't fix it. Bought this car off of Marketplace from just out of state. Ended up realizing that the guy that sold it, didn't even own it, he was flipping it. I didn't know it, but the car had sat for 5 years. Once I got it I started to realize this because of all the tell tale signs. The nail in the coffin sign was the air breather. It had the date and mileage hand written on it. It was 5 years ago and roughly 3,000 miles ago. I have no idea if the guy bought a new car and let this one sit, if he kicked the bucket; but it sat for a long time. I read that the clutch can get a rust ring in one of the cylinders(master or slave) from sitting a long time. So, I figured that its what happened with mine. Other than the hard shifts, it's going ok. If I shift at 2k rpm, I'm ok. If I take her up to 3-4, then I will have to rev match to get it to shift right...So, maybe the synchros are bad. It has 200k miles on it and it was a city, or near city car. Maybe they are just shot from an owner that didn't drive right. Well, about 3 weeks ago, I needed to get on it a little to get out into traffic. When it didn't want to go into 2nd gear, I hit third real quick and floored it. The car reved......but didn't pick up speed much. Yup have to do the inevitable: clutch time. Dreaded digging into this. After all the other BS that I have had to deal with: headlights, door lock module, plastic bits, E brake, etc etc etc. So I bought a basic LUK kit off of Amazon for $200. It was in a nesting doll of boxes... Funny part, it was from IDPARTS...$50 dollars cheaper than they sell it for. I live in Michigan and it's winter. I needed a heated garage, cause this is not going to be a quickie. I had to wait 3 weeks to get into the neighbors garage. The clutch was actually grabbing better 3 weeks after the slip than it was the week after it slipped, but I knew that it had to be done soon. So, I spent about 8-10 hours and changed it out. Found out some stuff that surprised me. Looks like one off the pressure plate fingers jumped behind the throwout bearing and was rubbing on the case of the trans. That's why it didn't want to fully disengage and allow me to shift properly. I had planned on putting a few picks up of the case, pressure plate face and the fingers, nut am new to this site and it looks like I have to import from a website. Figured I could just do a file path from my PC. Oh well. The pressure plate had 2 big cracks in it too. So bad one the one, that it had a step of about 1 mm or so. The clutch disc itself was scuffing the rivets near the outside of its circumference. Haven't read anyone else talk about a finger jumping the throwout bearing. Now it's on to the next project to keep her on the road....an ever evolving list.
's tiara aka the coolant heater plugs. I'll mess with it again this weekend.
