My clutch issue

I had a slight issue 5 minutes into the drive to Bug-a-paluza. Clutch decided it no longer wanted to work. Me and Bob pulled the cable and it was good so we determined the problem was something inside the bellhousing. Left the bug at home and took the truck to the show. Well, dropped the engine this morning and this is what I found.



You can see the clips that hold the throwout bearing to the fork laying in the bottom of the housing. One of the clips looked like it had freshly dropped, but the other clip looked like it had been laying there for who knows how long. It was stuck to the housing and left a nice black stain from the small amount of oil that had made it's way into the housing.

The bearing spins like new, but has a small light scar on the face. The pressure plate looks perfect. One clip looks great, but one is bent some. The fork for the bearing also looks great. I think the bearing has been held on by only one clip for a while, but I'm not really sure. Any ideas why the bearing would have popped loose from the fork? Is this something that can "just happen"?

Hey man, That makes since seeing how spongy the pedal was. If the bearing locks from time to time it would want to spin with the pressure plate and transfer the pressure to the clip. When I pulled my engine to turn it into a single port both my clips were warn through. Wrong bearing for the pressure plate that was in the car. Luck I guess. Well at least its not something catastrophic! Good Luck!!!

good thing it happened 5 mins into the drive, and not half way there

Use the heavy duty clips, or you can try one of the new late style throwout bearing conversion kits from Rancho.

Thanks, I'll try and get heavy duty ones when I'm out Wednesday, and yes, I was very thankful it happened close to the house.

Well, it's back together after a very long and grumpy afternoon. I hate installing this engine. It just never wants to line up right (that's right, it's the engines fault not the installer ). Anyways, I did get the heavy duty clips and they are really tight, but they didn't really fit that great. I think they are on there good, but I just never could get them to feel like I thought they should.

They always seem to fit really sloppy (like it's a bad design). The main thing is that they don't come off or break.

Bad design is exactly what i was thinking. One fits perfect, but it's like they should really make a left and right clip. The hole in the bearing is slightly higher than the groove in the fork, so the clip on the drivers side works great. But you have to flip the clip over for the passenger side and it lines up like crap. It seems to be holding so far though! Thanks for the tip on the heavy duty clips.

Looking up pics on the Samba though, it looks like there are quite a few fork designs with slots in different locations, so I guess it's hard to make a clip that fits them all perfectly.