Volvo 480 Club Europe

Hello,

I'll apologise in advance if this has been covered somewhere but I can't find it covered anywhere and I don't have the time to trawl hundreds of threads. Basically, the clutch in my turbo has been slipping under boost in 3rd (thanks to Robou mod ) so I figured the clutch was on its way out. I trusted you guys on the forum when you said the standard clutch can take it, which I stand by, so I bought a new clutch kit and shipped it off to the garage for replacement. After 4 cringeworthy days of them doing their best to change it they rang up and said it was done but there was an oil leak or 3 from the engine and the oil had leaked down onto the gearbox and had ingressed onto the clutch plate, thus causing it to slip.

I don't have much free time really to play with this as I have a 13 week old daughter, but I will endeavour to sort this lead and/or prevent any leaks getting onto the clutch again. I just wondered if anyone had come across this problem before and what they would recommend; I don't quite understand how oil would get into the gearbox, so is the mechanic wrong about the source of the oil? He recommended steam cleaning but steam plus dodgy old (still functioning) electrics terrifies me! I want to drive the car again but I'm worried that hot oil runs faster than cold oil and therefore don't want to touch it until it has been sorted. I can't afford to write off another clutch, help! Otherwise it's running fantastic

Much appreciated as always,

Swanny

Did they give you any indication of where the oil was leaking from? Does the engine bay look oily? Are you leaving oil drips behind when parked?

Steam cleaning done right should leave you with nothing to fear; Cover electrics with plastic bags, use a good degreaser, steam away and then rinse off with some WD-40.

Rather than starting a new post I'll tag it on to this one - I've taken a look at the clutch and I can see the clutch plate through the top of the gearbox casing (a small rectangular hole about 30 x10mm). One of my friends informs me that there should be a plug in here; can anyone help me out with where to find this plug? Apparently it's to allow checking of timing. Had a look on PFS and had no joy, if anyone has a spare then name your price, cheers.

Swanny wrote:Rather than starting a new post I'll tag it on to this one - I've taken a look at the clutch and I can see the clutch plate through the top of the gearbox casing (a small rectangular hole about 30 x10mm). One of my friends informs me that there should be a plug in here; can anyone help me out with where to find this plug? Apparently it's to allow checking of timing. Had a look on PFS and had no joy, if anyone has a spare then name your price, cheers.

plugged????

never seen one on the three I've had . . . . .

If oil is getting in there, where is it coming from?

bottom of air-inlet,? cylinder head? Dizzy shaft?

sort the source?

So is the hole supposed to be open? Seems crazy having the clutch exposed like that. I'll be honest, it's got multiple oil leaks and they seem to coming from everywhere, I just accepted that it's going to leak and that's that, maybe I need to look into sorting the leakage, just struggle to find the time. Cheers.

Usually an oil leak in the clutch comes from a leaky oil seal in the crankshaft.

You must have a hell of an oil leak

My cam seals, crank seal etc. etc. were all leaking once upon a time and yet no oil ever actually got onto the drive plate. down the back of the flywheel on the side of the block, yeah, but it always found its way harmlessly out the bottom of the bell housing without touching the clutch.

I did spill gear oil on it once through the hole you mentioned though.....

15 mins and about 3l of brake cleaner later all was well again, clutch pedal wedged down, car in gear, rolling it slowly along while dousing the slowly rotating drive plate with as much brake cleaner as possible through said hole. Phew...

Anyhow, I think your no.1 priority ought to be sorting your oil leaks out as they must be bad if it's contaminating the clutch!

And 4 days to do a clutch! WTF! When I was in the trade we never took more than a day generally, they're taking the piss. I'm assuming because they would have had a ramp and also that garages don't really give a toss about anything except profit that they opted for subframe down rather than engine+box out together from the top so it should't have taken that bloody long!

Well it's been a bit oily since I bought it, but the oil has never made it to the garage floor so I took that as it not being a catastrophic leak. My the look of the engine bay the car wasn't too well looked after for a good while and I don't get a great deal of time to clean up in there but at least it's under cover now. The first time I noticed the clutch slip was at the end of 7 hours of heavy driving from Carlisle to Norwich so I would imagine that's when the effects of any leaks are going to be farthest reaching. There is a fair bit of caked oil around the hole I descibed so I suppose my next job is to clean up and see where it's leaking from. So is the general concensus that there shouldn't be anything in this hole? I still find that odd.
As for the garage, they can take as long as they like, I paid a flat rate and they collect/drop off the car so no skin off my nose. Cheers.