Coming home from Bluewater yesterday evening, I was sitting in traffic trying to get onto the A2; it was stop start so instead of wearing the nuts off the clutch I used the handbrake instead.

Anyway, after a while I could smell a horrible fishy smell and then burning, I ignored it as I thought it couldn't be mine as I was not riding the clutch and my car has only done 10k.

It got worse until the point where it was coming in through the vents and I had to give it 5k to pull away and it would violently shake so I pulled over into a entrance, switched it off it to let it cool down, tried it again, still slipping and now screeching.

Phoned AA, had to join up, £136.50 later, they said they were going to send someone, 2 hours later, I started the car to see if it would go, stuck it in 1st with the handbrake applied, found the bite point and it was not slipping, no noise nothing, so I phoned them, just as I did the bloke turned up and said it would be ok to drive, so I went, and all the way home it was fine.

3 questions;

# Why did it do this?
# Do I now need a new clutch?
# Anyone else had this problem?

Cheers,

Clutchfryingdan.

:wave:

Had that with my Tipo years ago, time for a new clutch very soon, I gave up on that and sold the car for £75

With saying a fishy smell only thing i could think on would be the heater matrix...

Deffo not that, problem is the clutch, what I dont understand is why it failed.

P.S it's a Mk2b

That is a strange one i must say never heard something like this for a 10k car before hopefully it is just a one of thing that cant be explained..

oil leak onto clutch

can happen with any car, even a brand new one.

that would probably explain why you got no grip, then horrendus judder (As parts of it dried out, and parts were still slippy), then it was fine again.

I know the mk2 petrols are renowned for bad clutch judder from an early age. Would have thought the b model would have been a bit less susceptable to it