406oc.co.uk

Hi all

Every now and again the clutch pedal doesnt return to its normal position, you can flick it up with your foot and it will work fine and continues to do so for a while (a day to a few weeks)

Any Ideas

Mine does that too. Try bleeding it if it's a D9. Else it could either be a master or a slave cylinder. I just learnt to live with it

very odd. hydraulic clutch I presume? i'd suggest you might have something up with your slave cylinder which is jamming, possibly a bent piston or sticking seal? thankfully it's not too difficult to change, and only costs about £20 from the dealers to replace.

When bleeding the clutch after changing it, jack the nearside front corner up as high as you can (seriously!) as the clutch fluid intake is near the top of the brake fluid reservoir

Sorry should have said yep its a D9 52 reg HDI90

I am assuming its a Hydraulic one but not too sure - is bleeding it easy enough

Not being funny or anything but I wouldn't class this fault as something to 'get used to' I'd call it slightly dangerous - imagine pulling out of a junction and the pedal jams to the floor going from 1st to 2nd gear....could get very tasty

Well, mine doesn't actually "jam".. it *always* engages the clutch when I release the pedal. It's just sometimes the pedal doesn't come back all the way up to its normal position so I have to lift it up with my foot (maybe 2-3 inches off the top). The clutch operation itself has never been a problem, hence me "getting used to it"

I see Cap'n....Tis a weird problem though for sure

I just find it weird that it is very intermittent - i.e hasnt done it for a couple of months and the car is used daily.

Never happened while pulling away in anger as such just seems to be when manouvering and a couple of times when I 've got in it in the morning the clutch is down but like i say very infrequently

I think mine does this a bit - never have to pull it up, but sometimes it comes up far more slowly so your foot loses contact on the way up. Only now & again, never really sure if I imagined it....

Don't they have ratchets/quadrants anymore? I always thought it was a worn one of those, one of the 406's I drove years ago did this but it was due to the silly cow I shared it with riding the clutch. Once she quit, it stopped doing it

I have the same problem.
When I got into the car after a couple of years of non usage, the clutch could be pushed to the floor, and engage properly, but after a while, the pushing just shortened, now I can pull the clutch pedal towards me (back to it's original posistion) without any hassle, where as in the beginning, it would just go back to normal without me having to do it.

A mate of mine told me that because the car was sat so long maybe the clutch had got stuck, just gotta' see what happens when we move the car now, hopefully it will go back to normal!

mine had the same trait but i never got around to sorting it, like the captain i just learned to live with it and it even became a subconcious habit to pull the pedal back up after a while

^^^ yeah thats what I'm doing was just wondering if it was a common thing or not

I'll offer 2 suggestions:

1. A slow leak, probably at the slave cylinder which gets rather corroded over time and is subject to lots of vibration
2. Perished seal in the master cylinder

I was told a while ago by a mechanic that it could be something to do with the clutch return spring but I would have thought it would do it all the time so was a bit dubious and didnt continue down that line of thinking.