I had the joy of driving (ha) the linear car park known as the M6 and A14 this weekend (if you were stuck in the queue southbound on the M6 this afteroon, i feel for you).  On the way down on friday the clutch felt a bit odd once or twice, the biting point was very low and the pedal didnt seem to return smoothly

not using the car all weekend I forgot about it, until in the middle in heavy traffic at the M6/56 junction the clutch pedal just didn't come back up. Managed to get to the hard shoulder and return the clutch pedal and it seemed to resume normal operations, so managed to get the remaining 25 or so miles home driving very gingerly. I'll be getting it looked at shortly (it had the skoda handbrake problem occur on thursday evening, so im taking it to a local VAG specialist) but i wonder if anyone has any ideas - fluid levels look OK.

I've not checked yet, but is there a return spring ?

Yes but the spring acts on a cam and equally holds the pedal down when there is a hydraulic problem and the clutch return mechanism is not acting on the master cylinder piston to push it back up, after it has risen half way the pedal box spring will then raise it to the top.

 

I am guessing that you have a concentric slave cylinder on a 6 speed gearbox, you will find I have started & contributed to several threads on the subject, I had a very long saga before biting the bullet and doing the big job I had hoped to avoid.

 

A master cylinder change might bring some relief for a while but the problem will get worse and worse in hot weather and heavy traffic, just when you least need the grief, at the end i was having to bleed my clutch twice a day and could not drive more than 30 miles, a lot less if I hit traffic.

 

The fault was air being drawn into the system through an O ring inside the bellhousing where they have made the later plastic concentric slave cylinders in 2 seperate mouldings with an O ring seal that fails through heat and vibration, it never leaks fluid but draws air in.

 

The solution was transmission removal and replace the clutch & DMF at the same time as the flatulent slave cylinder.

Edited 26 July, 20214 yr by J.R.

If like me you can find a genuine VAG new old stock aluminium one piece cast concentric release bearing then you can be guaranteed of no future problem, otherwise you are just replacing a failed part with a new one with the same potential failure mode, a ticking time bomb.

Its a 5 speed box, and the advice I got from a garage i took it to this afternoon....   sell it now !

Internal concentric or external slave cylinder?

 

If the latter its an easy and cheap job.