I've had a horrible mess repairing my clutch and I figure I'd share the experience in hopes maybe it can help some others or at the very least be a mildly entertaining read.
Let's start out with the beginning of the issues. Around Christmas of 2017 my slave cylinder on my car stopped working. Typical symptoms such as pedal stuck to floor, fluid leaking from the normal location. I ordered a replacement slave cylinder from FCP Euro (the Sachs one here, part number 8K0721257A). Went right in and I didn't have an issue for almost a whole year. $35 repair and a $65 tow. Not too bad I suppose.
So around mid November of 2018, my slave cylinder broke yet again. Inspecting the car, I found that this replacement slave cylinder had cracked right along the plastic molding seam. I think the OE one was also plastic, but, upset I already had to be towed TWICE now, I found one made by Febi/Bilstein that is metal casting and I bought that. Thinking it'd be stronger. $150 this time for the part, same part number as before.
About a week and a half later from that, and no more than 400 miles or so, for the third time the pedal stuck to the floor. But this time there was no fluid. And though the clutch pedal was on the floor, it still seemed like the line was holding pressure. So, I had the car towed again to the shop my father works at and we started took the slave cylinder out to inspect it. To our surprise, the slave cylinder was still fine. That's when we suspected maybe clutch throw out bearing or pressure plate issues. I've heard of a few throw out bearing issues.
At this point it was just after thanksgiving and I knew I'd had to wait until the shops downtime to do my own personal work on the car, but, it was going to be the week of Christmas through to New Year's day. So I left the car at the shop and ordered some parts. I ordered a JHM performance clutch kit (stage 1) for $465 with Black Friday deal pricing, as well as the ECS tuning lightweight flywheel for $1,115. I found an OE LuK clutch kit for around $350 on Rock Auto, but figured the JHM kit for the extra money was a smart investment should I ever supercharge the car or add more power than the little I have. It's suggested to replace the factory flywheel every time you replace a clutch on these cars. While I found an OE LuK flywheel for $700 on Rock Auto, I went with the ECS Tuning model for a few reasons. It's a single mass unit, theoretically more reliable. It's also resurfaceable, so, I can resurface it should I need a new clutch I'll save a bit of money compared to otherwise. I also decided with 104,000 miles on the car it'd be a good time to replace the transmission fluid (which was $45 for the fluid). So far, we're up to $1,875.
Now due to my work schedule I didn't get to work too too much on the repair process with my father, but he started working on the car and eventually once he got the transmission off the car he noticed a few things that we though was indicative of an issue being something clutch related/not related to the slave cylinder itself. The release bearing was able to split apart, as well as had a serious imprint of the pressure plate fingers in it which was abnormal. The dual mass flywheel had a little more play than it should, but that was probably just normal for it's age and wear. The clutch disc was getting close to needing replacement anyways, but still had some life. The pressure plate seemed worn as well. But most importantly, there is a plastic piece that acts as a pivot-point/rocker arm for the clutch fork. This piece was split in two (This part here) . We though maybe with this piece being broken, it cause too much motion in the clutch actuation that is abnormal, and resulted in the throw-out bearing getting "hung up" or stuck." My father was busy with the holidays and it was nearing the end of our time frame for having the car out of the shop before business resumed, so, I next day shipped in the part we needed. A $3.00 became $70 with shipping lol, and it actually didn't even arrive until 10:00 at night the day after so it was kind of a waste. Regardless, we got the part in and finally had the car basically fully re-assembled on Sunday. Up to $1,945.
So, for good measure sake, my father wanted to bleed to clutch line and put fresh fluid in and make sure everything was working as it should be before sending me off with the car. While trying to bleed the line, the pedal wasn't "returning," or holding pressure and coming back. Eventually I started "getting a bit of a pedal," but it wasn't right until finally... What we learned to believe the cause of it all. The master cylinder blew and was spewing fluid everywhere. So, now, I need to find a master cylinder before Wednesday to get the car out of the shop. The only place that had it in stock was my local Audi dealership. They had it in stock for $290, and while websites had it, it would have taken to long to arrive so I paid the Audi premium for that part. The part number I replaced it with was 8K1721401H. Once we had that in the car and all assembled, the pedal worked and actuated like fine and it was finally fixed.
Add in replacing many one time use bolts, a hose, two front tires which were DESPERATELY needed, and paying the owner of the shop usage fees I'm totaled at around $3,150. The price honestly isn't that bad and I'm fortunate my father is a good mechanic and I didn't have to pay labor. A lot of people will ask why I didn't do this with the catalytic converter recall. The techs at my local dealership found a way to do the cat recall where replacing them doesn't really help much in cost savings on a clutch installation, it would still be around 6 or 7 additional hours of labor and I wasn't really in a mood to pay that honestly lol. As for now the car is finally back on the road, and everything seems normal FOR THE MOST PART. I've put about 40 or 50 miles on the car today, and the only weird thing left for me to look into is some weird pressure issue when pressing on both the clutch and brake pedal at the same time.
But long story short, some other symptoms I wasn't really even originally aware of all pointed at a bad master cylinder being the cause of all this. But regardless of it all, if you're replacing your B8 clutch I strongly recommend replacing the slave cylinder and master cylinder with it as well to help save some headache. Or replace both master and slave cylinders together if one fails. We think the master cylinder finally leaked and showed signs of failing because as things broke, I kept replacing them with stronger, newer, or better components and finally the problem worked it's way backwards up to the master.
On a side note, if I did have to pay out of pocket for all this at an Audi dealership and Audi rates, the total with labor and parts would be anywhere from around $6,000-$8,000.
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Originally Posted by Ape Factory
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