From personal experience, I know that this is a more frequent problem one
would think. It is often due to failure of the throw out bearing because of
wear to the piece that it slides on. This sliding surface needs to be
inspected any time the clutch is replaced and replaced if it has an
irregular surface. If not replaced, it will lead to rapid bearing wear
because the throw out bearing will not fully disengage. This will cause high
temperatures and potentially lead to sudden failure of the bearing fork or
shaft, 300 miles from home on a Saturday night, late.

Jim Henry
Durham, NC
84 Westy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]
> On Behalf Of mark drillock
> Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 1:29 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: sudden clutch failures
>
> The stock linkage parts inside the housing wear out but I
> have not seen one break suddenly. There are some poorly made
> aftermarket clutch cross shafts out there. These can and do
> fail inside the clutch housing, when a bad weld fails on one
> of the clutch release bearing support arms. I learned this on
> the hard way on a Syncro tranny after a month of it working
> fine. The inexpensive crappy replacements I have bought were
> gold colored and the welds looked shaky on close inspection.
> I would not use one again, though I still have some. If I was
> desperate I might try to add more weld and use one but I
> bought a few good quality ones to keep on hand.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> neil wrote:
>
> >..............
> >
> >Don't know how common it is for linkage to fail inside
> clutch housing.
> >
> >Any takers on that one?
> >
> >Neil.
> >
> >
>