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Old 10-19-2010, 01:59 AM
nick nick is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: St. Augustine, FL
Posts: 56
Default M46 Problems (kinda)

I just purchased a 1983 760 GLE, and drove it nearly 400 miles the same day with no drivetrain problems. The following day I could not disengage power to the transmission with the clutch (I could not shift gears by pushing in the clutch, even at a dead stop). I verified movement of the clutch fork, and even tightened the clutch cable to move the pressure plate even further off the clutch disk. I was about 50 miles from my house when this happened, so I just started the car in gear and floated the gears all the way home.

My wonderful fiancé assisted me in pulling the transmission out, and I found that the pilot bearing was trashed. The rollers were crumbs. It seems that this was causing the input shaft to be out of alignment and therefore angling the clutch disk, making it rub the flywheel and pressure plate.

All of the clutch components said "Made in Germany", "Sach and ....", "Volvo", and had the 4 Audi Rings. I figured the clutch could have been original, given the previous owner told me the car only had about 170k. I decided to go ahead and replace the clutch components and resurface the flywheel.

I tried jigging the flywheel up in a lathe, and was successfully able to center it up along the axis of the lathe, but I could not make the flywheel normal to the axis. After 2.5 hours I decided to take it to a company here in Jacksonville that has a diamond buffer designed for resurfacing flywheels. Fleet Pride did an excellent job, way better than I was expected to do with the lathe.

I could not find an OEM clutch kit for the car. I called about 25 different companies and emailed a few too. I finally decided to use after-market. I selected a Luk clutch kit, since they are OEM in a lot of vehicles now-a-days. Auto-zone offered it with a lifetime warranty (against wear too) for $205. This included the following parts: Luk (clutch disk, pressure plate) and Sachs and S... (throwout bearing), alignment tool, spline grease. I was excited to get the OEM throwout bearing.

I replaced the rear main seal while everything was apart. The car runs great now. No more clutch disengagement problems. It is definitely a blessing to have it back on the road. I really like this car.
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