Procedure for renewing clutch switch:

You'll need:

Torx driver set

Flexibility

Time: 0.5-1 Hour

Diagnosis:

To diagnose why your cruise has packed in, you can use an ebay special £13 lead and shareware vag-com.

Connect your lead to the car, open up vag-com and open a connection to the Engine ECU (1)

Click single block read and read in block 6 - the second and third blocks are what we're interested in.

For every button on the cruise, the clutch and brake pedals - you should all see them change the state of a bit in the third box. If the cruise is switched off, you're not touching the pedals and it's giving a reading of 100000 it thinks your clutch is locked in the down position and will never engage.

(I think, though dont quote me, 010000 will be a stuck brake switch)

Fix:

Once you've diagnosed this properly, changing the switches, whichever one, is an easy job - though you need to follow a process exactly or you may damage the replacement switch. I dismantled the old one to figure out exactly how these work.

On the superb, there are four torx screws holding the kick panel in place under the steering wheel:

Left:

Right:

Under the fuse panel:

Once these are out, the whole kick panel will slide towards the drivers seat, then drop:

From this you will need to disconnect:

-Kick panel light

-Diagnostic port

-Primary light switch

-Light dimmers

Once disconnected, put it somewhere out of the way and now the contortionist act begins, you need to look up above the clutch pedal, you should see something similar to this:

Green is the brake switch, blue is the clutch switch.

Grab the offending item and you'll need to turn it by about 45 or 90degrees anti-clockwise and it'll just lift out of its holder, disconnect the wiring then discard/dismantle/whatever you want to do with the old one. Take note of it's orientation when it's unlocked and ready to lift out, you're going to need the same orientation to get it back in.

Now, the fun part...

The new switch is self-adjusting, but has to be adjusted before it can be locked home - if you attempt to lock it home without adjusting it first, you're likely to smash the switch internals.

So!

1) With one hand, fully depress the cluch pedal.

2) With the other, push the switch as far home as it will go into it's holder, do not attempt to rotate it.

3) Hold the switch in place and gradually let the clutch pedal go until it's all the way home - as you do this you'll get a nasty cracking noise from inside the switch - dont panic - this is just the switch adjuster mechanism pushing home.

4) When the clutch pedal is fully home, push it back down, and turn the switch clockwise to lock it into place, keep turning untill it clicks... if it doesnt click it will not work as the internals will not line up properly.

5) Reattach wiring, push clutch up and down a few times and make sure the switch shaft is moving smoothly.

Check your new switch with the vag-com software and you should now be able to see it working. If you cant see it working, the switch may not have adjusted properly/is not clicked home fully.

Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly and all that:

However, note that the kick panel must engage with two parts when you slide it back home, on the left there's a stick out arm it slides onto:

and on the right there's a white plastic bracket:

I'll post some photos of how these switches fail later on.

Have fun

(Question - why are embedded images disabled?)

Bonus, cheers for the guide. Always helpful. We need more of these for idiots like me.

can we have the images uploaded again please!

yep any chance of uploading the pic,s again ?

The guy last logged in to the site in July 2009, so I doubt it is going to happen.

LOL never noticed that. thanks

The guy last logged in to the site in July 2009, so I doubt it is going to happen.

 

 

LOL never noticed that. thanks

 

 

Drop the guy a PM. Perhaps it'll notifiy him by email and he'll drop by to help you out.