406oc.co.uk

My clucth pedal has started feeling weird recently, and as of last night started crunching going into gears.
Months ago I found a puddle of fluid on the floor mat, thought nothing of it and was fine since.

The pedal does very little but feel spongy the first half, and feels responsive the last 1inch or so of travel.

The clutch still grips well and doesn't slip

I'm hoping this is just a hydraulic problem that can't be sorted relatively easy.

If it is the hydraulic am I right in thinking I need to replace thw whole system and how much is this roughly going to cost?

What's the best way to test this?

You're hoping it can't be sorted easily? I suppose the easiest test is try sticking it in reverse - if it's crunchy then the clutch isn't releasing. It's a sealed system and you have to get the master and slave cylinders, together with the hose and reservoir, all in one big lump and Pug want something like 200 quid It's specific to the 406 2.1td, I even checked Citroen but they didn't use it on the Zantia. Not sure if you can get it from factors but maybe someone can help you with that.

Cheers that's a great help. I couldn't care less about the price at the moment, I need the car for a 500 mile round trip next Sunday.

Better order up a new system on Monday.

Thanks. It has to be a hydraulic problem I think.

Thanks.

I bought one of these from a scrapper for about £25, I'd broken the reservoir pipe on the master cylinder during the engine swap.

I had this on my 2.1td, on that, it was teh hydraulic pipe between the master adn slave cylinder. It went quite quick on mine though, one day I had a couple of crunches, the next it had gone altogether.

although it says you can't top it up, you could give it a try!

You'd need to sort the leak out first.

And you'd need o find some way of bleeding it, I don't think the slave has a bleed (unfortunately, I can't go and look any more )

The DW10 set up looks completely different, before you ask, both master and slave, and even the clutch pedal. The Xantia is similar but not much use, only the slave cylinder and reservoir look the same.

it is a sealed system, although my suggestion was futile i would have tried it anyway

Evening, replaced the hydraulic system, its im proved all the sloppyness from the pedal, and most of the gears select smoothly,

Although third is still rather tempermental, and likely to crunch or not select 75% of the time.

the clutch still grips fine, are the clutch plates nackerd or is the gearbox slowly dying?

any tests i can do?

Get up to motorway speed in 4th, push the clutch in, put it in 5th, floor the accelerator and let the clutch out fairly quickly

If there's anything other than a jolt with the revs plummeting straight down, you're approaching new clutch time.

May I ask how you replaced it, breakers or stealers?

Crunchy gears is either the clutch not disengaging properly (but you just fixed that) or the 'box has seen better days. I had the same problem with third gear, I ended up flushing it with cheapo engine oil and adding some Molyslip (or local equivalent ) and it did the trick.

Brand new system from a local motor factors, engine and box are 176K with gearlube changed every 30K and mainly motor way driven. But if the box is dying there is nothing i can do about it. the gearlube in there is about 6K old now.

Also it may be a coincidence, but third only started playing up shortly after driving through a large flood ( as deep as the headlights at one point) is it possible for the gear box to of sucked in some flood water or something?

As it was fine before, not fine after...

Might have got in through the breather, change the oil to be sure...