Last week I was driving home from a day out at Alton Towers in the Vectra. A great car for long distance cruising even though it is 14 years old now. The old lady does typically 50 miles per gallon on diesel on such journeys except, of course, if we have the wobble box behind. She generally beats 40 mpg in town.
We were about 3 miles from home in Wigan. Had just left the M6 and were crawling along in the usual queues on the A49. I pressed the clutch down the Vauxhall stopped for about the 10th time in a mile. To my surprise the pedal stayed down. I got this strange feeling that the pedal was no longer there. Not correct, of course; it was flat to the floor. My only option to avoid a collision was to press harder on the brake to stop the engine and thus the car. Turning the engine off would work but might not halt the vehicle quickly enough.
Keeping your distance when driving in traffic is one of my good habits when driving. It has been over 20 years since I had a similar fault on a motor car. In those days clutch cables usually gave some warning by making a scraping noise to indicate imminent failure. I had no such warning when this hydraulic system failed.
To my passenger Chris’s confusion; I was able to drive home without use of the left pedal.
I hesitate to recommend doing this unless you are an experienced driver and are prepared to risk that it could cause further damage. You may prefer to call your breakdown service.
As a learner driver he wasn’t aware that you can drive without a clutch pedal; obviously not without a clutch as there would be no drive at all. Strangely I couldn’t shift out of first gear so, keeping the speed down we drove home. There were a couple of red lights so I had to deliberately stall the engine and restart when go appeared.
Rough but it works. Apologies to any following drivers as I had to keep the speed down because I couldn’t change up.
When I checked later I could move the gear lever normally with the engine stopped so I don’t know why it appeared to be jammed.
So, yesterday I drove to my usual garage in Bolton, Auto Car Doctor. This is about 12 miles away. No problem with the first part of the journey except for one red light on the first right turn. Changing up OK but I kept it down to 4th to give more flexibility. If you get the engine and road speed right the gears will usually change. Don’t use excessive force. Joined the M61 easily keeping down to about 50 miles per hour in lane one, no bother.
Exiting the motorway managed to change down to second. For changing down you have to blip the throttle until the cogs engage. Through the roundabout easily without having to halt.
A bit more difficult on the A58. Lots of school traffic. Multiple stops for pedestrians. About 10 stops in 1 and a half miles. Thinking I may need the spare battery. Starting the engine, moving off and turning right a bit tricky. The power steering depends on the engine running and battery power. Another mile or so without issues then a queue before turning left into Derby Street. Two re-starts. Looking good now with only about a mile and a half to go.
Turning right and a helpful motorist let me through. The last 100 yards was horrendous because of the parked cars blocking my view of any traffic. Moving off and turning being very tricky.
Arrived dead on 9:00 am as requested by my mechanic.
UPDATE
Two days later I collected my car with its new clutch slave cylinder and attempted to drive home. After about 5 miles I ran into severe congestion and the clutch pedal failed again. No blame to my mechanics as they did warn me the flywheel was suspect and this might have caused the hydraulics fault. Arriving in my street I found the starter motor had stopped working so I had to get help to park the car properly to avoid obstructing the highway.
As it was Friday evening on a bank holiday weekend I left it there until Tuesday. The recovery driver turned up on Tuesday morning and took the Vectra to the garage. The release bearing on the clutch had disintegrated so she needed a new clutch, flywheel and bearing. The slave cylinder was OK.
All is now back to normal thanks to Car Doctor. They, as usual, did their utmost to fix the car without delay and also made the effort to find the best value parts. I you live near Bolton I recommend this establishment. Use the phone and speak to Salman for a quote. They are slow to respond to Online enquiries. Details below.
If you have a similar reliable garage you would like to recommend let me know and I will add them to my posts.
01204 652000
Auto Car Doctor
St Pauls Mill
Caroline Street
Bolton BL3 6SX
https://auto-car-doctor.business.site/
