All that money over a little piece of metal!
Last week, my 12-year-old VW Golf gave us a horrible scare on 183. We were barreling south on the freeway, doing the speed limit when Somara (who was driving at the time) announced that the clutch wouldn’t pop back into place so she could change gears. If you’ve never driven standard here’s the deal; the clutch is mandatory for shifting otherwise the transmission gets fried. We managed to drift the car out of the traffic and into a nearby parking lot. I couldn’t believe it. The clutch pedal was stuck in the floor and it wouldn’t snap back into place. It just lacked the spring-like mechanism to put it back into the ready position.
I quickly called my friend Jeremy since he’s a auto buff plus we had just left his business five minutes earlier. If anyone had a clue or opinion, it would be him. I luckily made contact with my mechanic 30 minutes after closing time. Jeremy and Toby both agreed, my poor Golf was capable of hobbling to the shop in second gear exclusively. Just a couple catches: it had to be started in second gear followed by gunning the accelerator to keep it from dying; stopping was more horrifying, kill the engine at red lights. Riiiiiight.
Somara got a hold of her parents to arrange towing and then we took Jeremy and Tina to dinner at Chuy’s. How I enjoyed having a couple margaritas since driving was out of the question for days. Good thing my boss also gave me his phone number, Toby’s garage doesn’t open until 9 AM.
The repair entailed a week due to my mechanic’s workload. What can I say, he’s good and probably the best in Austin if you own a VW. Toby was hoping for something simple but no dice, my car prefers the expensive route, especially when I’m getting ahead on the bills…$861 since it became the bulk of the clutch mechanism. I only saved the part responsible as shown in the picture. Trust me, he had to replace the kit n’ kaboodle. Toby showed me the damage to the flywheel too, ugh! Oh well, I received 118,000 miles on a part which lasts around 100,000.
More about the part in the picture. It turned a rod which then turned a series of mechanisms to change the gear ratios. With the crack, this piece could no longer grip the rod, thus no more shifting. Jeremy can explain it better in the Comments if anyone cares.
Now I’m having to re-learn how to drive with a more responsive clutch. It gave me flashbacks of driving my car on its first day, a traumatic and embarrassing experience I would prefer not relive.