I had a leak at the heater control valve yesterday that turned out to be te small hose to the top of the valve.

Today I'm having trouble with the shifting. It acts like the clutch doesn't disengage at times. Sometimes it shifts normally some times it seems to stick in gear.

Did the water leak ruin the clutch? Any solution short of replacing the clutch?

 

Unfortunantly, you can't truly tell whether or not the cluch is toast untill you actually see it.

Coolant can and will ruin a clutch over time.

 

Well, it wasn't a long time. Maybe a four days.

Do you mean I'd actually need to disassemble the clutch to see if its ruined. Would I be able to tell by looking through the inspection hole?

 

Well, you don't get a very good look through the inspection hole. It's only there for checking the thickness of the friction material.

 

Having taken apart my clutch and heater valve i would say its possible. First thing i'd do (maybe you already did this) is to replace the heater valve. As you know it sits right above the clutch and its not too bad to replace it, hopefully you have smaller hands than me! I felt like Andre the Giant trying to get that thing out!

But if the heater valve leaks the clutch is the first thing it'll ruin. There really isn't any way to check the clutch that i know of. I just hope the clutch is old, maybe the original???

If you have any questions on the heater valve replacement i can go into more detail. Good Luck!
-Erich

 

So I guess the plan is to drive it until it getes better or screws up. No point going in there with out replacing the clutch and rear main seal. Thanks, Alex.

Steve

 

Steve - Did you already change the leaking heater valve? I'm not sure if you made that clear already...You seem to maybe imply that you did in your first post. I just want to make sure...
Erich

 

Erich,

Well not the valve. I changed the small hose that connects the valve to the left side of the engine. It had a hole.

I checked today and there are no other leaks at time. But the valve is apparently broken away from whatever mounting and is hanging from the hose at this time. I plan to change out the hoses going to the heater core and the valve as soon as I figure out how to access the heater core and get a new valve.

Of course, I may have to replace the clutch first.

Steve

 

I can feel your pain. This is a good news/bad news problem. First: Its not your clutch, But, its your pilot bearing! The coolant leak from the heater control valve finds its way onto the torque tube drive shaft. The shaft ends in a hole in the flywheel,where the pilot bearing lives. If this bearing has coolant leaking onto it, then the lubricant gets washed out and the needle bearing seizes up. Then the end of the driveshaft will weld itself to the flywheel. The result is that even though you depress the clutch, and the disc disengages, the driveshaft is still rotating, making it tough on the ol tranny syncros'. If the problem has just started, then you can probably save the driveshaft/torque tube. Left unchecked, you'll need a new one. The pilot bearing cost about $20. But the effort to get to it and replace, is same as clutch replacement. I'd recommend while you're in there, replace the clutch with a good sprung hub unit (centerforce is my choice) relocate the heater control valve (not hard to do), and you'll avoid this problem again. If you do the work yourself , and the driveshaft is undamaged,and replace only the pilot bearing, its a cheap, although laborous fix. Good luck.

 

Guess I'm still waiting on the good news.

The symptoms match up with the pilot bearing diagnosis. Easy to shift at idle, but harder as the car is under load or hot.

Can someone tell me how to relocate the heater control valve?

Wonder how long I can drive it without actually doing serious damage?

 

You have a pretty sound diagnosis and you have been warned that if you continue to use the vehicle there is the potential for a cascading failure of components. If you are putting off the work for cost reasons (nothing wrong with that) you probably don't want to destroy additional expensive components.

I suggest that you find alternative transport until you can fix it.

 

Good point.

I hate to replace the clutch at this point because its probably got a good deal of useful life left. But the repair takes so much time that I can't see not replacing everything while I'm in there, so the costs are not insignifcant. And time is a real problem.

 

Relocating the heater control valve is simply lengthing one hose and shortening the other. Just make sure you relocate it so the cable will still operate. It will take a very short time to ruin the driveshaft. It generates a tremendous amount of heat when the pilot bearing seizes, and they are machine tollarence parts, so if it welds itself to the driveshaft.... its toast. A rebuilt TT is around $400 exchange, and if the core TT driveshaft is damaged then it'd be an outright purchase. Probably another $200 or so. Two guys can accomplish all this is a weekend.

 

Sounds like I need to put it on blocks and start ordering parts. I was hoping to wait until I could schedule a time off more easily, but you guys have convinced me to stop driving it.

Does anyone know how to access the ends of the heater hoses in the passenger compartment?

 

If the coolant was leaking into the clutch would it not go through and onto the ground?