Hi all, just trying to get a sense of reasonableness…

I think my clutch is on the way out: revs rise too quickly when accelerating in top gear

The local garage has quoted me £900. It’s a 2015 Ford C-max 1.0 ecoboost.

Had a new clutch, master and slave cylinders on our golf fitted by our trusted indy for about £800 last autumn.
Does that help?

I think I paid £350 at one of those Mr Clutch type places, 1.4 Fiesta. They f***ed up a gearbox output seal and missed a clip from a CV joint, but did fix both with no quibbles when I took it back and pointed them out.

A normal* clutch kit is about £100, so everything else is labour/profit. Might be high, might be someone just doesn’t want to do it.

*As in no DMF, no new slave cylinder, etc.

Try mycarneedsa.com to see if the quotes reasonable.

Was about £800 on our Fabia last year

Sounds about right, we paid that for a Grand C-Max including new DMF, water pump etc

Most of the cost was labour so worth getting everything done at once

Thanks all.

Had ours done a couple of weeks ago. 2 litre S-Max turbo diesel. Clutch, flywheel and main bearing oil seal came to £1130. Local garage, main dealer quoted £800 more. 95000 miles.

You had the belt checked?

Those 1.0s are known as ecobooms with prices so high I’d even look at px it in.

I paid £225 last year. Labour only, I supplied the clutch as I was going to have a go myself but chickened out. Clutch was about £60 I think from ECP.

False economy not to change the DMF if it has one. Sadly that the most expensive item.

My T6 2.0TDi was £600 by a guy who came and did it on the drive, that’s including a LUC clutch 3 piece kit with the slave, which is what went in the first place causing me to get a new clutch!

Just done £1k at the local trusted indy, OEM parts, 2.0 diesel passat clutch with DMF.

Cost me £320 on my Civic Type R making progress machine. 😎

duncancallum
Full Member

You had the belt checked?

Those 1.0s are known as ecobooms with prices so high I’d even look at px it in.

Not saying there are no issues, but a lot of people don’t perform the wet belt service because it’s expensive, then act surprised when it either snaps or degrades, blocks the oil pump and causes oil starvation.

We were getting crazy quotes for Clutch, Slave and DMF on our V70 anything from 1250 to 2K+. I went through whocanfixmycar.com and was quoted £1K by Automotive Components Specialists in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. If you are in the South they are fantastic and will collect (we are 70 miles away).

but a lot of people don’t perform the wet belt service because most ecoboosts struggle to make it to that milage

To be fair it’s most wet belts …. The PSA puretechs the same.

It’s almost as if newer cars have been designed to be more difficult / expensive to work on

Wtf is a wet belt? Timing belt?

Clutch and DMF on our Grand C4 Picasso was near £2k. We were shocked at the first quote that came in so shopped around. All quotes were similar, apparently they are in a difficult position. As has been said, it mainly labour with the parts being reasonable

Yeah timing belt in oil basically

Wtf is a wet belt? Timing belt?

As I understand it, the timing belt is incased with the oily bits.

Too slow

Had a few cars with wet belts due to total loss lubrication systems (shagged seals). Modern belts mustbe quite bullet proof.

Wet belt is an ok design principal in the lab.

In the real world – combustion products and piston leakage mean that you get byproducts mixing with the oil which leads to an acidic “oil” that eats the belt .

Pushing of service boundary’s by both manufacturers and end users compounds this aspect.

Belts swell with the oil mix. Are ground down against bits of the engine introducing fibres to the system. These block oil pick ups vaccumn take offs and ultimately lead to engine failure.

£1100 on a 2015 Passat at the local indy month ago

The first ecobooms tended to die from a broken cooling system pipe, redesigned in 2015. It’s only more recently that the wet belt failures seem to be common. One hypothesis is that the ethanol in fuel is a more damaging contaminant than pure petrol.

Are your clutches made of cheese. 145k and 20 years old on my Nissan !

Instead of a general garage it might be worth asking a clutch specialist (like Mr Clutch – the clue is in the name!) a clutch change can be a pain for garage unless they do them all the time, hard to get good / quick at them otherwise.

Is there anything particularly difficult in changing the clutch on that engine/car? If not, might be worth having a go yourself.

New clutch on my Lupo at the weekend cost me £100, an afternoon on the drive, and one minor tantrum.

Did my clutch and DMF for £560 all in on my Subaru Outback.

£310 for original Sachs 3-piece clutch kit and DMF from partsinmotion.co.uk (they regularly do discount codes, and sell on ebay too so you can take advantage of some ebay codes)

£250 labour from local independent Subaru place (Sheffield Subaru Service if anyone is local).

Is there anything particularly difficult in changing the clutch on that engine/car? If not, might be worth having a go yourself.

Depends on competency and ownership or access to space to do it and tools to do the job, both for if it goes well and for when you need to get corroded bolts undone/worst case scenario.

EDIT – some can be a nightmare for access. I imagine a Lupo has a small engine with decent access around it. Some modern stuff barely has space to get a hand in, let alone tools as well. Kind of needs to be up in the air to properly get underneath.

Comparing the cost on other cars is pretty much pointless, unfortunately. As well as the huge variation in parts cost, the labor requirements vary hugely as well.
Eg a 16 year old rwd 1.6 petrol BMW (where you have room in the bay to shift the block forwards, split the box and drop it) is going to be totally different to a 1 year old fwd diesel with a DMF, where you have to get the subframe out the way and replace the fly.

Completely agree about having the space and tools available, but corrosion shouldn’t be an issue a 7 year old car.

The Lupo has a tiny engine bay with a 1.6 litre engine. The ops c-max is a much bigger car with a 1.0 litre engine.

trail_rat
but a lot of people don’t perform the wet belt service because most ecoboosts struggle to make it to that milage

tbh I didn’t have any particular trouble finding them with over 100K, seen a couple with over 200K when I was looking for a really cheap one.

Aside from people ignoring the belt service, the other problem is that they absolutely must be run on the correct oil and changes must be done on the dot especially if you do a lot of short journeys.

Is there anything particularly difficult in changing the clutch on that engine/car? If not, might be worth having a go yourself.

I’d planned to do it myself, but after getting the car up in the air and the very first bolt I attempted to take out being a nightmare, I just thought ‘sod this’. I was doing it in the street too. If I had somewhere warm and indoors to work on cars I’d do all my own jobs, but I’m too old to be scratching about under a car in the freezing cold with nobheads racing past 15″ from your head.

Don’t forget too, you might have to benchpress your gearbox out from under, they can weigh about 30kg. So unless you have multiple jacks or a mate to help just nope…

My rules now are, anything that requires getting under the car: the garage can do it. Likewise anything that has to be done in the winter.

£1500 for clutch and DMF on a MINI as the front left suspension and all of the front of the car has to come off to do it. Another £200 for alignment. 🙁

Is there anything particularly difficult in changing the clutch on that engine/car?

Apart from lacking the time, tools, experience and shelter, no!

Car has only done 45k, no idea if the previous owner was riding the clutch of course, but this is the first one I’ve ever had to replace. My last car (also a c-max) had 120k on the clock when I sold it…

Haha, fair enough!

Eye watering garage prices, combined with a preference for older cars means I’ve done a fair few jobs that I’d previously have considered to be a bit scary. But so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how straight forward most stuff actually is.

But I do concede that doing a clutch without much in the way of tools or experience would probably be a baptism of fire!

IANAM

Eye watering garage prices, combined with a preference for older cars means I’ve done a fair few jobs that I’d previously have considered to be a bit scary. But so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how straight forward most stuff actually is.

🙂

Me too. The problem I find though, apart from access and the weather, is dealing with the unexpected. You can have a decent socket set etc, arm yourself with as much booklearning, Haynes manual peering and YouTube watching knowledge… And then some little plastic part breaks or pings off into low-earth orbit, never to be seen again. Meaning that two hour job that you allowed eight for as you’re just a ‘have a go hero’ now becomes an entire weekend plus bank-holiday juddering ballache.

Just the other week during those storms, I had a flat battery. So I went to remove said battery in order to bring it in for a deep charge. I’ll just move that washer hose out the way… famous last words… 22 year old washer hose snaps, pissing liquid all over the battery etc. No matter says I, I’ll just gaffa tape that back together. Nope, just moving the hose causes it to start breaking in multiple places. Right, I’ll pop to Euro-Car-Parts and get some new hose. But which size? They have multiple. In weird arcane imperial? sizes 1/16th’s 2/16th’s 1/8th etc. Not all being in stock. Take a punt on the one that looks closest to the eye. Get home, hose is wrong size. Too tight… Ok, get a hairdryer out and try to enlarge… hey, this is working! I’ll just keep heating and pushing onto the washer nozzle… NOPE. washer nozzle snaps and falls into a deep recess inside the bonnet. At which point I dissolve into a sweary piss wet through rage, slam the bonnet down and go inside. MOT in a month or so. No idea if non-functioning windscreen washers is a fail. Maybe they won’t bother checking. Hopefully they won’t bother checking.

And then on the other side of the coin, my first timing-belt change which I’d trained for like Rocky facing Ivan Drago went like a dream. Done in a few hours and off to the pub. (in the summer tho)

No idea if non-functioning windscreen washers is a fail. Maybe they won’t bother checking. Hopefully they won’t bother checking.

Yep they’ll check, and yep it’s a fail (it’s even a fail if you don’t have any water in the tank).

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-private-passenger-and-light-commercial-vehicles/3-visibility

Washers must provide enough fluid for the wipers to clear the windscreen effectively.

Defect Category
(a) Windscreen washers not working or not providing sufficient fluid to clear the windscreen

The problem I find though, apart from access and the weather, is dealing with the unexpected. You can have a decent socket set etc, arm yourself with as much booklearning, Haynes manual peering and YouTube watching knowledge… And then some little plastic part breaks or pings off into low-earth orbit, never to be seen again. Meaning that two hour job that you allowed eight for as you’re just a ‘have a go hero’ now becomes an entire weekend plus bank-holiday juddering ballache.

This is very much the nail on the head.

There’s nothing particularly complicated about cars, whatever the naysayers might say. The trouble is it’s one thing they Haynes manual writers, or the dealer’s mechanics going on a training course to the manufacturer where they get a brand new car to take appart. It’s a different proposition entirely a decade later when all the plastics have gone brittle, the bolts have rusted, and you don’t have quite the same tools as the dealers so despite what the pictures show there’s no way your socket is going into that gap.

Update, cost me £920 for a new clutch, cylinder and flywheel. The parts were about £450 so the labour wasn’t unreasonable I think. At least I can tell the difference driving it. The mechanic said it was the third one he’d seen recently with the same problem.