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Hey all, Thanks for looking at my problem!
I have a (UK) 1999 Honda civic 1.5iLS VTEC sohc with no real repair history.
Like usual I start the car with no issues and leave it 5-10 minutes to be nicely warmed up (rarely drive it cold). When I take off its usually a gentle low rev drift to the road side with 0 issues, all seems perfect… bear with me!
Once on the road I accelerate away through first gear to second usually without a hitch, now its not exactly, but 90% of the time when I put my foot down a bit my civic well accelerate gently with the engine sounding like its doing more work then it should be (higher rev sound). When I put my foot fully down to accelerate I still get the gentle acceleration but the revs take off! if I kept my foot down it would redline with the car pootling along, and no power.
Its only been the past 3 months this has been getting worse and was never like this. Always was the case it would tug like a horse, but now I dont feel safe to accelerate to overtake… nothing worse then being stuck behind a slow moving truck!
Again, thanks for even reading, any advise or suggestions would be awesome!
My thoughts:
-> dodgy clutch?Adam.
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Sounds like a slipping clutch.
A simple test is to find a safe spot (no cars around), set the parking brake, engage 4th or 5th gear, rev the engine to 1,800-2,000 rpm and quickly release (drop) the clutch pedal. The engine should stall immediately. If it doesn’t, you have a bad clutch. Since you can make it slip just by normal driving in a higher gear, my bet would be a worn clutch disk.
Hi John. thank you very much for your response. I just went and did what you said with the reservation that i had it tested for slipping by a well known company, so was expecting to be ok… well it was’nt.
I had the car in 4th and with it at 3000 revs i can drop the clutch and the engine will splutter for 2 – 3 seconds without stalling and can even be kept alive if i dip the clutch again.
Is it best to replace the clutch plate or do it all? (full new kit).
Thanks again!
You should do the full kit – which will include clutch disk, pressure plate, and throw out bearing.
That said, I have gotten away with just replacing the disk and t/o bearing before because the clutch was not worn down past the rivets yet so the pressure plate surface wasn’t scarred, it looked to be in good condition (and most of all, I was short on funds).
But it would really suck to go through the whole process of taking the transmission out a 2nd time because you didn’t replace everything that should have – so I’d strongly recommend getting the whole kit.
Thank you very much John, Ill get a full kit and get it replaced.
any objections to an armature getting dirty? Got to learn sometime!
😀
As long as you know what you are getting into, have the time and tools, should be no problem.
I think Eric has a video for sale on doing a Civic clutch – I would HIGHLY recommend buying that and watching it a few times.
He also posted a complete video on doing a Focus clutch – it’s a 4 part series so you’ll have to click through them to watch it all. This should give you a general idea of what’s involved. Here’s part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eoUL347ce0I would also go ahead and replace the pilot bearing also as preventive maintenance.
Good luck and keep us posted.
First you don’t need to let it warm up, with a fuel injected engine all you need to do is start it up and go, in fact it’s better to do it that way as the system is designed to warm up properly when used this way.
Here is a video that I did on how to check a clutch if you suspect it’s slipping.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7JJ_g2UuBI
It could also be an engine performance issue but do this test first as the most common cause would be a clutch issue.
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