My Panda 4x4 twinair started to mis-behave last week . My wife and I were struggling to get it into gear but only sometimes and if it was too difficult we could stop altogether and it would slip into gear again. I right pain. So I asked the local garage to take a look and they cam up with a few theories most of which involved the clutch but couldn't explain the intermittent nature of the problem.
When they took the clutch apart they could see that the DMF was at fault. The whole plate and bearing had shifted slightly so that that the inner bearing (or race) had worn eccentrically into a more "egg" shape than circular.
The whole thing was replaced and it's working fine now but it got me thinking what could have caused this? Can I blame my wife's driving or the previous owners (though they had only done 10k in it, my wife has done 50k miles) or is it more likely to be a design fault or dodgy part.
Thanks for any advice
Jon

What's a DMF?

babbo_umbro said:

What's a DMF?

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Dual Mass Flywheel.

Personally I think 60k miles isn't bad. My Dad's Vauxhall Zafira lasted 32k and my Vectra 43k. My current Panda TA 4x4 is fine at 40k so for me that's progress. Admittedly I can get wheel scrabble in this warm weather out of junctions. And I believe it's been offroaded around a farm too. Sure your repair was costly but it may last rest of the car's natural life. The only way to know is to do another 50k. And by then car probably worth trading on a "Scrappage Scheme".

My first TA 4x4 was 4 years old and with 29k, and it felt lot older than that, £2k in maintenance coming up meant it had to go. MOT history since proves I wasn't paranoid. You're probably only second Panda TA owner with DMF failure on here. Wouldn't call it a common fault. Only other big repairs are uniair failure and rear discs and pads. And as I've not encountered I wouldn't expect you to.

Clutches..

People can slip through a manual clutch in 500 miles.

Our 04panda had a common issue with 'asbestos free' linings.

It failed to bed in correctly..and would judder.

3 clutches under warranty in 16k miles.

Completed 97k now.

But ANY stresses can load the 'flexible' element of the DMF.

A LOCAL MAIN DEALER sold a 10k old panda that then failed for new owner.. issues with damage to gearbox casing too.

At 50k it could just be wear and tear

Charlie

Thanks for all the views. I'm not disgruntled with the mileage to be fair it's just worn in an odd way and was hoping that it is just mileage and not heralding something else that's gone wrong. If this is the way they wear out then fair enough, I'm just kinda new to the DMF thing!

Oh, and I could never give my wife's baby away as part of a scrappage scheme!

Just wanted to add that our 2014 twinair 4x4 needed DMF and clutch at around 64k miles. selecting gear became really difficult. unfortunately the garage took a few goes to get it right before I saw a few posts about the DMF and that solved the problem.

Al D said:

My first TA 4x4 was 4 years old and with 29k, and it felt lot older than that, £2k in maintenance coming up meant it had to go. MOT history since proves I wasn't paranoid. You're probably only second Panda TA owner with DMF failure on here. Wouldn't call it a common fault. Only other big repairs are uniair failure and rear discs and pads. And as I've not encountered I wouldn't expect you to.

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Third, perhaps ?

Had Uniair unit fail c.56k miles closely followed by clutch/dmf the failure of which I think was exacerbated by much clutch slipping to try and make progress with the failing uniair module (running on one cylinder).

Haven't had rear discs and pads issue but I think folk are overly scared by the hub containing the bearing being part of disc arrangement. Seem to recall this was the deal on my Alfasud and is not as scary if approached with care??