# Not good Southport



## Telbert (May 13, 2021)

A couple of months ago the gearbox on our TT needed replacing. As I'm getting on a bit I decided to put the car into my local garage on Mornington Road and as the gearbox was being changed why not get a new clutch put in? I was quoted £250 with me supplying the parts which I thought was reasonable. 
Once the new clutch arrived we took the car to the garage and left it with them. Late that day we received a phone call saying it was the wrong clutch. (Ebay compatibility list strikes again!) As we only really needed the gearbox doing I told them to replace the original clutch and put the replacement gearbox on. 
The following day they rang again. This time they couldn't get it to go into gear and asked was I sure the gearbox was okay. I wasn't as it was a used one, but it had gone through the gears easy enough before fitting, so I said yes. Back to it they went. Next update was they could get a couple of gears but the clutch wasn't working as the slave cylinder needed replacing. There was one already on the replacement gearbox so I said to use that, but they said that was useless too and they had stripped bits out of it to try and get a working one. The only thing they could suggest was that they got a new one at a cost of £80, but couldn't guarantee that that would solve the problem. The car ended up being towed home and my pocket £200 lighter. 
I didn't want to pay but wanted to make sure I got the car back. When I examined the car I found there was no slave cylinder fitted and it was leaking out the fluid . In the boot alongside the old gearbox was the remains of the two slave cylinders. On both of them the pushrod had been snapped in two. Bought a new slave cylinder for £18 and determined to do it myself, thinking it was going to take me ages to figure it out. 
I started to remove the bolts that hold the bracket for the gear cables to the gearbox and immediately started having problems getting the first bolt out. I managed it with a fair bit of effort and when I examined the bolt I saw that it was bent. That's when I twigged how they had (expletive) up. They had put the bolt in so it was behind the clutch fork and it was stopping it moving and the slave cylinders had snapped from the amount of force they had been exerting on the clutch pedal. 
It was nice to be able to sort it so easily, but frustrating at the same time. Since then I've told as many people as I can to watch out and have heard since from some who haven't listened to their detriment!
Having just now found out on the forum about the clutch pedal issues I think I'm going to have to give it a check as that must have been beyond the realms of normal wear and tear!


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