Hi all,

Yesterday it was ****ing it down and I was out driving, had to go through a few deep puddle. After going through one in perticular, my foot slipped and in slammed the accelerator down, redlining the car in first.

Once I came to change gear I found I couldn't get out of gear. I had to turn off my car, put the car in gear, and then start the car. Even when the clutch is fully depressed the car will crawl forwards. After a while yesterday the car start changing fine, even this morning it was. I come to drive it tonight and I have to rev match perfectly between road speed and engine speed to get it in and out of gear, and even then it's a stuggle, so I turned back.

Tl;dr car won't change gear after getting wet and being revved hard, but the fault is intermittent. Car crawls when in gear and clutch fully depressed

Any ideas? I guess it's clutch related

Yeah, it sounds a lot like your clutch isn't fully releasing, even with the pedal on the floor. I'd suspect the hydraulics rather than the plates, and quite possibly the issue is the slave cylinder.

Does the clutch pedal have more or less resistance to it or does it feel just the same as it always has?

 

If it feels a bit lighter or the same as it always has, I would agree with Ken's diagnosis of the slave cylinder failed.

 

If the pedal has a heavier feel to it then it could be related to the pressure plate.

 

The slave cylinder shouldn't be too bad to change if it is that. I can't remember off hand if it is externally mounted on the gearbox or internally on your car. If internally, it'll be a gearbox out job anyway.

Thanks for your replies, I ended up just replacing the clutch and it fixed the problem. 3 of the spring retainers on the clutch had snapped off and one of the springs was missing when I took the clutch out. FYI the slave cylinder is externally mounted on my 1.8tsi FE 1Z3 (gearbox name was MDP 02S). It's located on the top of the transmission, and is easily accessible one the airbox and linkages are removed