Clutchless gear change

facade

pendragon_arther wrote: »

Wow. How times have changed. I was a trainee fitter after leaving school in the 60s and I changed the clutch on our Ford Cortina myself, with my wife assisting under the jacked up car.

The old Mk2 cavaliers could be changed without removing the gearbox in under half an hour.
The mainshaft pulled back, and you pressed the clutch and put spring clips on the pressure plate, then undid the bolts and it fell out through an inspection plate.
Popped the new one in, slid the shaft back, tightened the bolts, pressed the pedal, and removed the locking clips and it was done.

I refer you to my sig

Retrogamer

arcon5 wrote: »

your flywheel failed then

Nope, it was the friction plate for the clutch.
It was my first car. A 1.5 diesel Peugeot 106. Nice old solid flywheel in them

onomatopoeia99

facade wrote: »

The old Mk2 cavaliers could be changed without removing the gearbox in under half an hour.
The mainshaft pulled back, and you pressed the clutch and put spring clips on the pressure plate, then undid the bolts and it fell out through an inspection plate.
Popped the new one in, slid the shaft back, tightened the bolts, pressed the pedal, and removed the locking clips and it was done.

Quite a few Vauxhalls of that era had similar arrangement as I recall. Seems so simple, I wonder why it's not commonplace.

gilbert_and_sullivan

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Quite a few Vauxhalls of that era had similar arrangement as I recall. Seems so simple, I wonder why it's not commonplace.

Quite a few car makers made simple durable tough cars in the 80s and 90s, easy to work on anyone could fix them, theirin lies the problem, look after those cars keep the salt off the undersides and you had a mass market car that could easily last 20 years or more without ever visiting the dealers premises once sold.

They learned that lesson and thats why everything is so difficult to work on now with few low volume exceptions.

facade

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Quite a few Vauxhalls of that era had similar arrangement as I recall. Seems so simple, I wonder why it's not commonplace.

The only hitch was you had to borrow the first set of spring clips off someone who had done it before, then you kept the ones off the new clutch.

Back to the topic, if the clutch has gone/worn out you'd have no drive, and gear changing is no problem.
This sounds like the clutch wont open, so a hydraulic fault possibly?
Although we did have one that wouldn't disengage because half the fingers had worn through and snapped off the diaphragm spring.