Repairing a Slipping Clutch

[tassuperkart]

Skez
You cant easily get the engine out on its own.
The gearbox will come out in about an hour on your own. Its a shit easy job to do on a FWD and I cannot imagine how you got it in your head that its hard.
Its a bit trickier to get it back in alone tho unless you have the car on a hoist.

Reswob
Your car is a stock carby engine car.
DO NOT waste time and money on heavy duty clutches. They are a waste of time and money on a street driven stock car.
They only offer heavier clamping of the pressure plate which is only necessary if you have made substantial modifications to increase engine power.

You just need to replace the clutch with a nice light STANDARD clutch kit that will last years.

Clutch change is a very straightforward job and shops "should" charge about 5 hours labour @ whatever rate they see fit.
So allow around 500 for labour alone.
You can make a call or two here and there regarding the price of a clutch kit to compare to theirs.

You will be able to get quite a firm quote to get this job done.
Encourage the mechanic to replace your "rear main seal" when the gearbox is out if there is so much as a stain of oil coming from it.

Ummmm.. window regulators have NOTHING to do with the operation of the locks and vice versa. If the window is difficult to wind, then perhaps the liberal application of some grease on the sliding and rotating parts would help.
I use motorcycle chain grease in a spray can with a thin tube sos you can accurately aim the grease spray.
Chain grease goes on liquid like and then dries off to a thick and tacky water/weather proof grease.

The only door release parts that will benefit from some lube are the actual lock mechanism itself at the very end of the door and/or the winder regulator.

Same for the door locks and release handles. Thing is you have to remove the door handles/trim, arm rests and door trim cards to reveal the innards that actually need attention.
The window winder handle is a bit tricky with a funky clip thingo holding it on hidden away at the back against the trim cloth and youll have to bend up some thin wire into a tight "hook" to get a hold of the round end of the clip to remove it.
Brute force on the winder handle will reward you with breakage.
However, replacement is just a matter of slipping the clip back into the little slot you pulled it from and just poking the winder handle back in place on its shaft.

Once the handles and rests are off, the door cars need to be carefully levered off. There are numerous kinda push in pins around the side and bottom edges that hold the car in place. Care must be taken when levering them out otherwise the cards can be broken where the pins live or the pins themselves damaged.
Either way the trims hanging off and bulging are the results.

There you go.

L8r
E

[skez]

yeh all good and front wheel drives are just gayer to work on in my experience not mentioning that they are evan gayer for being a fwd lol u all no it but yeh i got one anyway

[Reswob]

HI Tassuperkart,

I was wondering why someone recommended a heavy duty clutch. I did think that they were more for performance modified cars but what do I know.

.......

I don't know what the hell is going on with the window regulator/door handles/locks whatever. I thought that was the issue because when I got the car I found that if I wound the window down too far the glass would fall out of alignment and hang inwards. Then it wouldn't go back into place when I tried to wind it up. There is no problem winding the window itself. It's not gluely or sticky. After a struggle I was able to get it up again (bad idea to have a window open on a parked car in Sydney) but after that I could not wind it up or down.

After this a family friend used this tool (looked vaguely like a spanner) to take the internal door handle off and the trim to see what was going on. The window hadn't fallen off the regulator but it wasn't winding up or down properly as it seemed to be only raised from the rear and not the front, so it fell out of balance. Anyway, we put it back together and I did not have any trouble with it as long as I only opened it a quarter.

However, I had ths friend who is a motorbike person and who gets all claustrophobic in cars. He wound it too far down and it was another battle to get it up again. After this, I could not use the external door handle and the lock was not working. I spent ages trying to get it to work again. It now seems that if the actual glass is at a certain level it interfers with the door handle and lock. It is also like the regulator and the glass are speaking another language as you can be turning the handle and the window isn't communicating with it well. For the while I have managed to sort of fix the problem but the external door handle is kinda gluely, the lock button is hard to pull up (ripped my thumb nail off and it got the flesh! OW! ) and the key is a little hard to turn in the lock.

[SET23L]

Reswob,
what that sounds like to me is that the the window itself has come apart from the window regulator and has possibly popped out of place, as they are normally glued to the regulator, and the window is actually pushing up against the the wires for the locking mechanism etc.
as E said though u will need to take off the door card and all the other fidly crap to confirm this. but i think that may be your problem, as i had a similar issue a little while ago

[tassuperkart]

The windows wind up using 2 arms crossing over a "scissor" action.

One of the arms is wound up and down with the regulator (winder)
The other arm "floats" and has a plastic wheel kinda thing that travels in a slot cut into the door skin.

The glass sits in 2 plastic clamp thingos and is glued in place.

Ill bet either the slot is bent/distorted and the arm has dropped out of the slot or one of the plastic clamp doo-dahs has come away from the bottom glass.
The window will still go up and down but you have to hold it horizontal and ensure it stays in its guides to get the window up.

Very common in older cars and easy to fix.
You have to get the trim off to have a look. Wind the glass about half way down and all will be revealed.

L8r
E

[ET87]

reswob sorry i thought it was a turbo.. sorry.. yer standard clutch is fine. n will do the job perfectly fine.

[Reswob]

I finally got around to taking the trim off the door after an hour wrestling with a coat hanger wire while some loons were getting drunk on New Year's Eve and telling me my spark plugs were definitely the issue.

....and yes the glass has completely come off the regulators.

I trust this is a silicon job? What is the brand or type of silicon that I should get?

[BennyET]

i've used sikaflex 227 in the past to good effect. available at bunnings, supecheap etc
make sure to clean the glass and mounts with wax & grease remover or metho

[Reswob]

Cool thanks for telling me that, Benny. I thought I'd have to clean the whole thing out before I glued it back together again.

[Kimmo]

Does the window still foul the lock?

Sounds like some of the actuating rods may have been bent... I'd be tempted to get the lock out of it and chuck on another door.

[Reswob]

I'll have to glue the glass and the window regulator back together again, then I'll be able to see if something is bent out of shape.

I'm not so sure getting a new door is the best thing for it. Everything looks pretty pristine in there. Can't find a spot of rust anywhere on the door and its components, inside or out.

[tassuperkart]

Clean those plastic glass clip thingos and the glass where its glued up real well.
Use lots of Sikaflex. Just load up thise little grooves where the glass sits with Sika.

Make sure the glass is located correctly in the guides and lower it into the clips. Just let the Sika spew out. Dont bother getting funky and neatening it up or other useless shit.

Wind the glass up hard, make sure its all nice and level and the glass has slipped ALL the way into those clip things and dont use the window again for a day.

All fixed!

L8r
E

[Reswob]

Yep, thanks for the advice Evans. I did all that and why would you think I'd try to make things all neat and pretty in this circumstance? This situation calls for drowning everything in silicon.

The dudes at Super Auto Cheap didn't have that Sikaflex stuff. I told them that the adhesive was this black rubbery stuff and they said that was windscreen sealant, so that is what I have used. We'll see how it has worked next evening.

Gosh I had an engineering PhD student holding up the glass for me and he wanted to time it so we knew when 5 minutes had passed and precisely when the silicon started to set. When I noted that probably wasn't that precise he said millions of engineers had tested this and that it was. *Sigh*

I'll now be working on the surface rust.

[Kimmo]

LOL... the arbitrary-sounding number of exactly five minutes just happens to be precisely the time required ; )

[Reswob]

Well I went down to the parking lot to check the window and it seems to work pretty well. The window is now not interfering with the door lock, so it seems nothing is bent out of shape. However it does appear that the regulator itself is a bit worn. I think that the horizontal arm that the window is adhered to is a bit loose (It can move fore and aft. Someone told me this should not be happening.) and towards the more anterior of the two plastic clips to which the glass is glued is hanging a bit low. This means that when the window is wound up, the glass tilts forward slightly leaving a tiny gap on the rear vertical edge of the window between it and the frame. This necessitates one to push the window backwards to close the gap. I suppose I won't worry about it now until the regulator really falls to bits, then I might hunt around for a new one. It seems that the driver's door regulator is starting to press the disintegration button, as now I have to be quite mindful when I wash the car. Sometimes when I blast the beast with a fire hose I find that some water gets into the cabin.