Contacted my local dealer, asked how much it would cost replacing the clutch on my car.

All was well until they told me that I would need to buy a clutch bearing aside from the clutch kit, as its not included. And the damn bearing costs a fortune.

Here are the prices

296€ for the clutch kit
241€ for the clutch bearing
251€ for the handwork

788€ bloody hell.. lol

Any thoughts?? Is it normal?


thanks

Is this the bearing they are talking about?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Clutch-Re...arts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item255e004dd0

You forgot the dual mass flywheel... that's probably another 400Euro...

-Alex

seems high to me, id be shopping elsewhere.

I havent had my JTD Clutch done yet, but previous cars/ clutches were no where near that. When I had my 4x4 clutch done last year, that was £130 for the full clutch kit, £10 for a spigot bearing and £150 labour. Thats a 4-5 hour, gearbox out, cross member etc etc not an easy job.

get a better quote!

How to calibrate the selespeed examener?

run the option "End Of Line Service calibratrion". It lasts about 30 seconds. A flash of error may appear on the car screen, dont worry, its normal.

spyshagg said:

run the option "End Of Line Service calibratrion". It lasts about 30 seconds. A flash of error may appear on the car screen, dont worry, its normal.

Click to expand...

Yeah - ummm... I've done this on a few cars now (you're right about the instrument panel 'Gearbox Failure' as the EOL calibration finishes/shifts through the gears).

As far as getting the gearbox working, I've been successful.

Trouble is, this EOL doesn't reset the Clutch Degradation Index - mine stayed at 12940 after replacing the clutch - and therefore the car drove very irregularly for several thousand kilometres until the ECU slowly learned lower values (it's down to about 5000 now).

Many times I tried to run the degradation index recalculation process in MultiECUScan - which comes with directions that I've managed to commit to memory:
- Activate procedure
- Start the engine
- Do a pickup in 1st gear (earlier versions said 2nd gear) with throttle pressed ~25%
- Drive for 400 metres
- Stop the car
- Turn the ignition off, then back to MAR

This has not worked for me. When driving for 400m, at what speed? Changing up through the gears? Exactly 400m or doesn't it matter?

There is even a second procedure - "enable clutch self-calibration" - execute procedure, start engine, wait a while, switch off - which seems to run successfully (code 00 returned a few moments after starting). But this is a bit short of info as well. Does the calibration happen on the next startup? Or over the next few hundred starts as I found?

One thing I did work out - when the parameter "EOL self-calibration" says "Not performed", it means "not performed since turning the key on", and it doesn't mean "not performed at any time in the past and needs to be performed" (I thought it might have been trying to tell me that). It says "OK" immediately after performing the EOL, and will then say "Not performed" after the next start.

-Alex

A tech from Selespeed.de told me to never run the "enable clutch self-calibration" because it would damage the clutch cylinder (also called "bearing").

He said, EOL only! I did mention to him that I installed new flywheel clutch and cylinder.
And to tell you the truth, thats all I ran and it was wonderfull driving it with the new clutch and cylinder.

Besides, you can definitely tell the EOL calibrates everything (the clutch release and the gear changes). Try to run the EOL and unplug the ELM cable in the middle of the test. Then try to go for a drive. You wont, because the car becomes undrivable. It will jejejejeerk like you never experienced and kangaroo from the moment you put your foot on the accelerator

spyshagg said:

Besides, you can definitely tell the EOL calibrates everything (the clutch release and the gear changes). Try to run the EOL and unplug the ELM cable in the middle of the test. Then try to go for a drive. You wont, because the car becomes undrivable. It will jejejejeerk like you never experienced and kangaroo from the moment you put your foot on the accelerator

Click to expand...

Erm, yeah, that's what I had, pretty much... it was a lot worse than driving with the old clutch Engine would just about stall because the clutch engaged much sooner than it should have, had to put on a lot more revs and chirp the tyres to move the car. Things started to improve after five journeys, and it did come right eventually as the degradation index slowly worked its way down. It's now very smooth, nearly as good as my 500 Dualogic.

-Alex

when my EOL failed mid test, I also recall the pump was left activating every 15 seconds or so! and after a successful test it only activated once every minute (car idling). So in my understanding, the german gentleman from selespeed.de was probably correct when he told me to only run the EOL, as it seems to calibrate pretty much everything...

But I can't really explain your degradation index thing, though.. I had a lot of trouble when replacing the clutch because the warehouse sent us the wrong cylinder twice and he blew twice. During those two times we did run the "clutch calibration" the german told me no to run (the cylinder was already dead anyways!). So I suppose when the correct cylinder part arrived, the clutch calibration test from before already reseted the index, maybe.

Thanks for the interesting information! Yes I agree with your hypothesis, as that index number is stored in non-volatile memory, so I think it's perfectly possible that you'd managed to reset it and it stayed reset ('new clutch' calibration), hence why it drove well when you did the final EOL.

Or I might just have been out of luck and my EOLs haven't worked properly, but at least I haven't popped a cylinder... and I have had the satisfaction of the clutch getting steadily better ever since changing it. So all's well that ends well

Maybe if anyone else has any similar experiences, we can continue to share and compare notes on the subject - perhaps another time on another car, I shall pay someone for a quick stint on a genuine FIAT Examiner and see if that sorts it out faster. But at least MultiECUScan can get it up and running and continue to monitor it.

-Alex