Clutch/slave cylinder/other failure? need your expertise!!

B8 S4
#1

Hey guys -
My car is 2012 6MT S4 with 30,000 km. APR s1v2, EC short shifter, AWE catback.
some of you have heard my story in person, but I will post it up here hoping someone would help point out the most likely cause of what happened to my car to help me decide which route to take. I will use point form to be concise:

  • On a few occasions I noticed clutch slippage on a 2-3 and 3-4 shift before.
  • about a month ago when pressing accelerator moderately to hard, RPM would climb by 300-400, then go down immediately and car would pull as it normally does.
  • EC shifter was originally installed and not aligned properly (installed 8,000 km ago) and about 3,000 km ago I started having problems shifting into 1st and reverse.
  • EC shifter was realigned and properly installed about 1,000 km ago but that did not resolve difficulty getting into those gears.
  • This Sunday I was smart to take it drag racing with Toronto guys (my first time ever to a drag strip) and did 5-6 runs. Car would shift normally (after I managed to get it into first each time) but would roll forward with clutch fully depressed - sakimano saw this when I lined up with him.
  • After these initial runs, car stood for 30 minutes, could not get into 1, 2 OR reverse AT ALL.
  • but did 3-4 runs after that once I managed to put it in gear.
  • driving home after about 15 minutes, pressing the accelerator in ANY gear would result in RPM climbing to 4000-5000 and car would barely move forward.

Dealer says they need 8 hours of labor just to diagnose and let me know whether it will be warrantied or not.

Please don’t beat me up to hard for the obvious abuse I gave this car!
What do you guys think? Clutch? Cylinder? something else?
Any useful insight would be much appreciated and will help me make a decision of whether to have dealer do the work or go for the aftermarket.

#2

Welcome aboard!

Sounds like slippage

This happened when my clutch fully let go and the pressure plate was stuck in “engaged”.

Sounds like premature clutch wear and the dealer should be footing the bill for this if you’re still under warranty. Although I’m not familiar with the TD1 mine field. Do you know if your tune means you’re SOL for drivetrain warranty?

edit: lol “m i n e f i e l d” becomes minefield

#3

Hey, good to see you post up. George thought it was a pressure plate problem. If it is a worn clutch problem, I guess it could trigger those same symptoms as bangoman outlined above.

How is it now? i.e. was it a bit better after it cooled down? Or is it still at it?

I noticed you rolling forward at the staging lights at the dragstrip and I was thinking ‘damn, he’s accidentally deep staging every time’. Little did I know it was your clutch/pp acting up.

As far as aftermarket goes, I am just not sure what is out there for the B8 S4. What I would do is mentally prepare yourself to pay $3000 or so to get this fixed for one thing. Because you don’t want a surprise.

Second off, to diagnose, they need to take the trans out from the sounds of their labour quote. Welll there is $1000 in labour already…so you may as well just have them replace the clutch at this point if it’s already off.

Third, the aftermarket clutch options for the B8 S4 isn’t exactly…existent. It’s pretty slim! I do know that everyone I have spoken to says the B8 clutch is crap…so perhaps going aftermarket would make sense. Only problem is what the fuck is there? The flywheel is a weirdass design, so I am not sure if anyone is doing anything with the B8 S4’s full clutch/PP/flywheel. Getting a 13 lb JHM flywheel on there would be nice.

#4

Car is exactly how it was on Sunday on my way home - RPMs climb sky high every time I press the gas and car is barely accelerating. Driving a rental now, car is sitting at the dealer.
As far as my options (and their cost):

  1. I tell the dealer to go ahead with their diagnostics and they spend 8 hours or $1,000 (when most shops who’ve done it before would do the entire clutch swap in 8-9 hours) to take the tranny apart, then:
    a. It is something other than clutch that caused the problem OR its diagnosed as premature clutch wear = everything is covered under warranty and I get a new (still crap) OEM clutch and perhaps some other parts (slave cylinder, etc.) for free including this diagnostic which would also be covered.
    b. It is clutch and they fault me for it, then its $4,300 parts and labour for a new (OEM=crap) clutch.
    c. It is clutch and they fault me for it (no warranty) and I ship the Clutchmasters FX400 or 300 to them (cost is about $1,000 with shipping) and get them to put it in, then its another $1,000 for them to put everything back in = $3,000 and a nice new aftermarket clutch.

  2. I tell the dealer to forget it and take my car (which is still driveable but barely) to the aftermarket shop that quoted me $1,100 in labour for to install that same Clutchmasters setup for a total of about $2,100.
    BUT if the aftermarket shop opens the transmission up and finds anything other than the clutch broken, I’d have to get the part from Audi (or alternate source) and pay for it myself. Total cost $2,100 + ???

Can you guys think of another option? Which one would you choose?

As far as options, Clutchmasters FX300 and 400 + South Bend DXD (???) are the only options I know of.

Richi mentioned another secret product in development on Audizine a bunch of times, but its not out yet and I don’t know when it will be.

#5

All prices above do not include applicable sales taxes :slight_smile:

#6

Well thought out.

Stock clutch sounds like a bad option
Aftermarket installed by Audi sounds better but still awful
Otherwise I don’t know…you will end up spending a thousand bucks in rental cars

Tough I’ve. Pm jimmybones and request his feedback. He is an Audi tech

Then pm JHM and ask if their clutch is ready yet with their lwfw

#7

Please elaborate :wink:

#8

Great meeting you Sunday…yeah you know your options well.

All I can say is there is no real hard and fast rule for TD1 at the dealer, some have gotten properly treated, mostly because they did the same, plus a bit of luck. Others had gotten dry screwed mostly because they came across as jerks - I’d say you’d fall in the first category though…:slight_smile:

Seems like you know everything we know from AZ…I was going to refer you to MDMA2004 (your countryman?) but you’re already there. He’s a great guy and will tell you whatever you need to know about the FX400.

Awesome article worth reading if you didn’t see it, surprised this one fell to the bottom.
http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/350288-In-Depth-Details-on-the-Clutch-and-Release-Systems-of-Audi

#9

glad you took my advice and joined the forum!

Not sure if I just missed it but was there an option where:

Z) It’s the clutch, they will cover the cost under warranty, but you get them to put in the FX400 clutch in its place at no charge? Or will they only install factory parts under warranty?

Second question, do you plan on going stage 2 anytime soon? If so, where you going to go with the FX400 clutch in combination? I ask, as that $2,100 becomes negated as it was an expense you would have otherwise incurred at the point of stage 2.

#10

I get the impression he wants an OEMish car with some semblence of a warranty. Going stage 2 and aftermarket clutch are 2 things I would bet a Coke were not on his horizon.

Hopefully he finds an option that works here. Sucks.

I think I mentioned this on PM but Petrashevsky, if you are going to have Audi do the tear down to see what’s up, then if they say ‘your fault you need a new clutch’, find out if they will be OK with leaving the car tying up a rack while waiting for your aftermarket clutch parts to come in. I would have bet anything they wouldn’t be interested in doing that for more than a day. If they wouldn’t, youd be paying twice for lots of the labour (teardown, put backtogether, park it outside, wait for clutch, tear down again, install new clutch). They will be more than happy to wait if you’re buying an OEM clutch (as they have a 35% dealer markup on the part, and Audi makes a good nickel supplying the dealer as well) but if they aren’t making that extra $1000 or so, I don’t think they would.

Maybe jimmybones can chime in.

#11

I was planning to go stage 2 after my 40K km service, but still not 100% sure, still hesitant, will see how this clutch business ends for me as obviously encountering any problems, whether caused by tuning or not, makes me think twice.

I did see mdma’s (not sure which country he is from as the old USSR is now 15 countries but I’m pretty sure or first language is the same :))), tomtom’s and richi’s review of FX400, spoke to a bunch of people as well.
Its all up in the air and will depend on what the dealership tells me.

The latest on that is I told them to go ahead and diagnose the problem today, result should be known by the end of the day today.

bear, you’re right, I haven’t thought about me buying an aftermarket clutch and having them putting it in under warranty - this will only cost me the clutch without labour. Good thinking! will definitely explore this.
I will keep you guys posted when I hear from the dealer.

#12

yeah, I thought about that, sakimano, for sure.
if its not warrantied, and it takes me a few days to get a new clutch, I will get the car transported to Pfaff tuning or twins, ship the new clutch to them and have everything put back together at half the price.

Pfaff even told me they have a service where they take my car in an enclosed truck and bring it to the shop.
The fact that dealership wants 8 hours just to take the tranny apart pisses me off.

#13

ask them for a loaner. They must have something for you…especially when you just authorized them to do about $2000 in labour (teardown+buttonup)

#14

I got a PM from petrashevsky so here goes. First B8 clutches suck! It doesn’t matter if it is the S5, S4, A4, or A5.

I thought the pressure plates were weak and after replacing some along with talking with CountVohn it is obvious that they are the issue. It is my opinion that the pressure plate collapses or gets weak enough to the point that the clutch hydraulics can’t fully release the clutch disc. My friend tomtom had and has the same problem as petrashevsky. When I replaced his clutch it had gotten so bad that you had to turn the engine off to go into either first or reverse and once you let off the brake (with the clutch pedal depressed) it would start to move with some speed. You had to slip it to get into second too. I didn’t feel like driving into the higher gears since it was so bad at that point. Now after driving 11k miles on the 6 puck clutchmasters kit my friend tomtom needs a new clutch again since he gets slippage. Tom and I have figured out that the current B8 S4 aftermarket clutches out there really don’t address the pressure plate issue. Most just use the factory pressure plate and then try to tweak it with different springs but that doesn’t work. The American car guys have figured this out a while ago.

There is good news though. Recently I helped out a guy on Audizine with replacing his B8 S4 clutch and he told me that the flywheels are the same part number for the S5s and S4s. I didn’t replace the flywheel on tomtom’s car when I replaced his clutch. The guy figured this out when he ordered a new flywheel for his S4 and got a flywheel for the 2.0T/3.2 that was too small. Apparently there is an error in the ETKA system that states that the S4s get a revised part number flywheel which is for the smaller engines. He checked the part number on the flywheel that was in his car and it was the same as the S5s. This means that the JHM S5 flywheel and clutch kit should bolt right up to a B8 S4. That choice should work out the best since the JHM flywheels and clutches work wonders for the B6/B7 S4s.

Now I think JHM is playing it safe with the B8 S4s. I say this because over the past few months I have been looking at clutches and flywheels for tomtom and heard different things from the guys at JHM. First I talked to Jake who said they had a light-weight flywheel for $1,200 + a $800 core charge and a stage four clutch kit for $1,350. Then Dru told me that they didn’t have anything for the B8 S4 and I later asked about a clutch alignment tool and Dru never got back to me. Then I talked to CountVohn and he offered to help but it didn’t go through with tomtom.

As far as Audi warranty covering the clutch: I highly doubt it. Clutches are wear and tear items and at this point unless petrashevsky has them put in an aftermarket clutch or shitty stock clutch then he will be out a grand or so. I think the best option at this point would be to get a JHM S5/S4 light-weight flywheel and stage four clutch if they are willing to do it. Also since petrashevsky did authorize teardown then the dealership should provide an Audi loaner.

Man you guys type fast because I keep getting interrupted from posting with having to read new replies.

new clutch setup that looks promising
#15

what dealer did you buy from?
what dealer did you take the car to?

also +karma for jimmybones

#16

superb info there, Jimmybones, thank you for taking the time!

lots of the specifics is way over my head because before I did my research yesterday, I wouldn’t be able to tell a clutch from a flywheel having both in front of me…
So I have to ask regarding your comment about aftermarket not addressing pressure plate situation:

Does tomtom need a new clutch after 11k with FX400 because based on his experience, no matter which clutch you go with, it just doesn’t work with factory pressure plate? or even Clutchmaster’s pressure plate which is the same as factory?

If that combination is so bad, then why aren’t more people reporting clutch failures? I’m sure enough of us with 6MT are spirited drivers.

Regarding JHM - does their setup for S5 and B6/B7 S4s use their own pressure plate which works well with their clutches?

#17

Man if the JHM clutch solution fits the B8 S4, that is awesome. Such a great clutch kit.

#18

Not a problem. It just took a little while to get all the info in there.

Yes tomtom needs a new clutch after 11k miles. We used the clutchmasters pressure plate that came with the kit and it is a non-SAC style pressure plate. Supposedly the clutchmasters kit can handle the amount of power that tomtom’s car is putting out but it is obvious to me now that it can’t. tomtom got a DXD clutch kit that we will try out when he has saved up enough for a new flywheel since they raised the price up to $1,500 for a new factory flywheel recently.

The factory pressure plate uses a SAC system that works great but the clamp load is not enough to hold with the higher amount of power that these cars can make.

JHM uses a B7 RS4 pressure plate on the B6/B7 S4s and now B5 S4s. I asked CountVohn about the B8 clutches and pressure plates but he couldn’t give up too much information. He did say that the pressure plate is very similar to the B7 RS4 pressure plate that they use on the older cars.

#19

Heard back from the dealership!
It’s the clutch that’s worn out “almost to the rivets”. They say I also need a new flywheel. I showed pictures to someone who can tell a difference and they confirmed that clutch wear has caused this.
Is the wear normal? I don’t know but Audi wouldn’t cover it. I don’t have enough arguments to fight that statement.
You can see the pictures they’ve sent me here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/kkolomiyets/B8S4Clutch?authkey=Gv1sRgCPXXwYzSyOeF6AE
If anyone can confirm or refute their statements, please share.
At this point I’m exploring my options, should be able to make up my mind tomorrow.

#20

The only experience I had with getting warranty work done on a wear and tear item was with my old Mazda. It chewed through a brand new set of rotors in under 11,000km and there was actually a guarantee at the service depot that the brakes would last 15,000km or more anything less was premature wear. Now all they did was machine the rotors but at least I didn’t need to pay for the service.

This is a tough one… you could always get AofC involved… not sure they would be much help though…