Clutch pedal on floor – VW Golf

Returned from a week in Morzine on Saturday afternoon, jumped in the car (Mk7 Golf) to find the clutch pedal on the floor – can’t change gear so car currently stuck miles from home. Checked the Dot4 fluid and it’s below the minimum level so I topped it up naively hoping it would sort it, but of course it didn’t. Just called 2 garages I use – the near-the-car one in Leicester can pick it up and assess it with no cost given as yet. The Loughborough one will cost £100 to get it back to them then confidently said £1200-1300 for a new clutch and flywheel without seeing it – and can’t look at it for weeks. This is the last thing I need right now. Any Golf/VAG owners have experience/helpful words of wisdom?

Odd that it’s dropped whilst not being used. Best case scenario is a new slave cylinder, which depending on access *should* be a fairly simple job.

Do you have AA/RAC membership as they’ll transport the car to a garage to save you some cash.

Clutch slave and release bearing are inside the bell housing IIRC. If there is a leak at that end the box has to come off to replace. At that point changing the clutch is sensible given the labour involved. Flywheel seems odd though maybe that is also considered a wear item in the same way.

jeffl – sorry – I was a bit unclear. It was ok until I pressed it, then it stays down. Not with either AA or RAC 😕

Nixie – apparently if you don’t do both together it’ll be fine for a week or so then need doing so you’ll need to get in to do it twice…

Didn’t realise it was inside the bell housing. Flywheel may be a DMF so if it has approaching 100k miles on it then may be an idea to replace. Had to have the one on my Octavia done at 120k.

It’s done 110k miles

It will be clutch slave cylinder.

As it sounds like they use a concentric slave cylinder – you have to do 100% of the labour also required to change the clutch – so unless the clutch is brand new (in which case, shoot the person that didnt do the slave cylinder!), then yes, it makes total sense to put a clutch in it too.

Flywheel – likely a dual mass flywheel. SOP would to replace it, but you can get away without depending on age/condition. More likely to be needed on a Diesel (more vibration nastiness to absorb).

You dont need any sort of specialist to do this work, its absolute bog basic stuff for any MOT & service place.

Yep had the same on a mk7 golf at 110k.

Pedal went to floor despite being fine the day before.

New clutch and flywheel fitted by my local non-specialist spannerist for about £1000 iirc about 6 mths ago.

we had similar with a volvo.  Sometimes we would get to the car in the morning having not used it for a couple of weeks and the clutch would have sank towards the floor.  Lifting it up with your foot would make it work again.  Fluid levels were fine.  Garage looked at it a couple of times but couldn’t find anything so in the end it was a clutch replacement and it’s been perfect ever since.  As above, possibly could have just been the slave cylinder but given that they were already there probably mad not to do it all at once

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Have you tried lifting the pedal up then pumping it up and down since topping up the fluid? Might be able to limp it to the garage</p>

Did they ever update the clutch pedal design on the later cars? I had a Mk4 Golf that this happened to and it turned out to be the clutch pedal itself. The tab that interacts with the cylinder pushrod had snapped off. Apparently this was a thing on that era of VW (early 00’s)

Not that you can do anything about it roadside but worth checking before paying out to have the box removed etc.

Same happened to our golf last year (my2011 with about 105k on the clock) – luckily right outside our driveway!

New clutch, slave cylinder and maybe master cylinder…. can’t remember.

Cost about £800 at our local trusted indy.

Ours went nearly to the floor a year ago (2015 2.0 TDI, 50k). Odd thing was it still worked but had bugger all travel. Foot underneath and lifting it back resolved and it has appeared to be ok since.  In our case it occurred while driving off a roundabout and the the week or so before the car had been in for a fluid change.

I had a MK4 golf with a similar issue, turned out it was a snapped clutch cable.

Learn to do clutchless gearshifts. To get going, put the car into first gear and crank the starter, if it will let you. You can then just drive off in first gear. To upshift, lift off the throttle and quickly shift straight into the next higher gear. As the engine revs drop to match the road speed for that gear, it will just slot into gear. Changing down is a little trickier. You need to shift out of the higher gear, give the engine a big rev, then shift into the lower gear. This will allow the engine to spin fast enough to match the road speed of the lower gear. Once you get used to it, you realize that you don’t really need a clutch at all except to make stopping and starting a bit easier.

My pedal sometimes stays down on my seat Leon. It’s a common fault on vw cars that the master cylinder needs changing. A quick foot under pedal to bring it back up and it’s fine for a couple of months.

About £45 i believe for the master cylinder.

Had a 2010 caddy do the same, pumping the pedal would bring it back for a bit. It happened a few times and every bit of the cutch system was replaced in the end. Company van. Was also the last VW the company bought.

2nd the slave cylinder. Had the same issue. It’s one the bell housing unfortunately hence why you may as well replace the clutch.

Looks at 08 plate Golf Mk5 with 80k on the clock on my drive & wonders how long before it follows suit, thinking it’s a good excuse to replace it soon.

Then remembers it’s an automatic!

If you’re in Loughborough area S Line are worth a try or Lion Garage. Second about clutchless changing, just do it when the roads are quiet, drove my wife’s Micra 10 miles to a garage to get a new clutch fitted, just don’t go very fast and hope you don’t need reverse.

If you’ve not already done it, refill it and then see if you can get it empty again- pumping pedal, whatever. You’re not expecting this to fix it, you’re looking to see where the fluid comes out. Agree probably the slave cylinder but it’s worth being sure