Quick Questions..

I have a SPEC racing clutch I picked up from ecstuning. I had it installed a year ago and put about 8k miles on it. It has been acting funny and I had it checked over by Linden Volkswagen before my trip to SOWO, it checked out fine.

The symptoms I have been having over the past month is the following:
- Clutch pedal sticks sometimes.
- Some times on take offs it will grab very low and not return to neutral unless I move forward to go into second gear.

I drove it on the highway last night into South Philly and the car was fine, take off RPM was at around 1200-1400 rpms with no issues.

Yesterday I had a lot of pedal stick when driving around the town to grab food from wawa and spoke with SPEC and they said the Slave/TOB is failing. My local mechanic said the TOB/Slave was failing too.

What was recommended:
-Buy a new clutch kit, (Another $1000 plus labor) to solve my problem.

There are no signs of slipping AT ALL. Just a sticky clutch pedal sometimes and a quick grab onto first gear during take offs (happens once every few days)

What WOULD you guys do if you were in my situation. I have a stage 2 GIAC tuned GTI with other mods, I have the SPEC clutch from ECS tuning, stage 3 on my car.

Does your shifter stick in first gear sometimes too?

Buy a DSG.

In all seriousness though. Do they have a warranty? You say its a year old? wouldnt that most likely fall inside a warranty period?

They may have wanted you to change the clutch in fear that fluid may have contacted the friction disk in the clutch which can cause issues. In reality SPEC should or I should say Southbend or Clutchmasters would do in a case like this - replace the defective slave/tob and have you send the clutch in for inspection and if damage was caused by the defective product they would replace it as per the warranty on the clutch.

Sorry this happened to you but defective parts do happen from time to time. The way they are treating it is another story.

hope it works out well for you.

Phil

I left a message and no one got back to me. I found a transmission shop that will do a new clutch and install for $960. They want to use Brute performance.

From what Peter at Turnersville Transmissions told me that the clutches they use are very high quality, give OEM feel and can handle a little more power then stock. My car is stage 2 GIAC and I regret ever installing a stage 3 clutch. I know the shop very well so I am going to see if SPEC can issue some type of refund.

Spec told me it was the master cylinder that failed which is impossible because I just had it replaced in hopes of it being the issue.

Spec seems to be turning into APR.... to soon?

1FlyGTI said:

can handle a little more power than stock. My car is stage 2 GIAC...

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Thats the only thing I see as a possible issue. A Stage 2 car will be higher on TQ and may go through that clutch quickly. I dont know the brand so I cant speak to it.

Stage 3 may have been bad for you but if you were planning on going KO4 then maybe not, a different brand may have yielded a better experience.

I dont know how the clutch company can now say the master when they said the slave.... Odd.

1FlyGTI said:

spec told me it was the master cylinder that failed which is impossible because I just had it replaced in hopes of it being the issue.

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That's funny they told my golf R customer the same thing. He has the same problems and shifting issues. I put a new slave/tob in and installed a different companies clutch kit with the stock dual mass flywheel and he hasn't had a problem since


VW master tech
Authorized Unitronic dealer

I would bleed the system just to be sure there is no air in the lines. The slave cylinder is gravity fed, just a split second of no fluid would result in air bubbles. Im going through very similar symptoms and Im bleeding it tonight. Ill let ya know if anything changes.

I have had the system bled multiple times. Still having the issue.