Well I finally did it. Bought myself a newer car. A lovely 2000 limited wagon w/5speed. She has a few more miles than I had wanted but it was time for a car and she has had TONS of maintanence over the years.

I am pretty much happy with the cars performace except for one thing. Going from a stop to forward or reverse. I just can not do this smoothly , ever, unless I slip the clutch a little bit. I get shudders , jumping and jearky starts all the time .

My past 2 cars had manual trannies so I think we can dissmiss inexperiance. Excuse me three. 88 loyal DR, 88 toyota long bed 2wd, 75 bmw 2002 that has a little cam bump:grin: . Still have the loyal and the 2002.

I have some theories as to why the clutch in my new soob is giving me problems (from a stop only). If I am moving, the car shifts smooth as ky.

 

1. There is air in the clutch hydraulic system.

When performing the "pedal free-play" test. Initially I have an inch of pedal movement. After depressing the pedal a couple of times the free-play reduces to half an inch. Hmmmm. It should be somewhere between .16 and .45 inches

2. The clutch master or more likely the clutch slave cylinder is faulty.

With a little pressure applied to the clutch pedal and subsequently the throw-out arm. I can push the hydraulic piston of the slave cylinder backwards into the body of the cylinder. I think you can include the reasoning in statement number 1 here also. The clutch slave cylinder is the only old and crusty thing on the car.

3. The throttle cable is not adjusted properly.

When the car is warming up and idling high . 1000-1,100 rpm I can release the clutch pedal a little bit and the car with start moving, smoothly ( I did not release the pedal all the way while doing this but almost) . Smoothly in first or reverse. Once the car is warmed up and idling at 650 or whatever rpm it is supposed to I can't operate the gas pedal with out causing the rpm's to jump. I have a little free-play on the gas pedal but if I apply just a tiny bit of pressure the rpm's go from 650 right up to 1500-1800 and then will settle back down to 1,000rpm. I have tried multiple times to get the car's engine speed to increase slowly to a thousand rpm's but it just wont happen. Hmmmm.

Thanks for reading my post. I will be purchasing a service manual for the car today .

Is this your first awd manual car?

 

That sounds about like how my friend did in his 01 RS untill he got use to pulling out an awd car.

how many is a few more miles?

 

nipper

130,000 miles. Yes it is my first AWD car.

I have not found any record of the clutch being replaced, yet. I'm going to call the dealer where most of the service was done and ask politely if I can have the complete records.

If it hasn't been replaced at 130k it probably wouldn't hurt it do so. But just give it some time and see if it's just simple unfamiliarity or actual problems before you go diving into countless contengincies of problems, and money.

Do a serach for "clutch judder" or "clutch shudder". This should give you all the answers you need. BTW I have a 00 OBW limited(manual) as well. I used to have the same thing til I replaced the clutch at 150,000. It's an all to common problem.

Thanks, I'll search it out.