Clutch on 99 s40

Clutch release bearing collapsed on my 99 s40 and whilst they can be noisy for a while and you can drive on a bit, this failed pretty fast and I was stuck. I left a message on A1 website and they phoned before 9.00am and quoted me a price of £310 for recovery and a new 3-piece clutch pack, pressure/friction plates and bearing. I thought that was too good to be true, given that I work on my cars myself and have not had a job done by a garage for a decade or more. I checked out the job myself and it looked like a nightmare which would take me a day and a half or two days, if I could not get the driveshafts off (those pins and no room) or extract the gearbox(engine has to move) it would get worse.

So a nice guy came about 10.00am and stuck it on a loader and I got the call it was ready at 3.30. Picked up the old heap and was a bit stunned..after 17 years of a really nasty stiff short throw factory clutch I now have a very gentle fairly short throw clutch which has really made the car much more relaxing to drive. Often big chains tend to tighten alloy wheel nuts to a torque only a Brontosaurus could remove, which can cause them to crack. Mine were done at about 80 ft/lbs ish which is fine for these fragile wheels. By undoing the strut/hub bolts etc, It might be possible to do this job without removing the driveshafts from the hubs, just from the gearbox, however the book and Volvo\’s instructions say that the shafts have to come off the hubs. The front wheel bearings are two-stage angle tightened on the 99-04 s40s and the wheel bearings felt exactly the same as I had set them 3 years earlier when I changed them. So if the shafts were take off the hubs, then an accurate reassembly job was done. If not, then how cunning is that, it makes the job much easier as you disturb less stuff.

There is no play and the wheels feel fine and the car drives really smoothly. I saw someone on the reviews make a fuss about the warranty conditions, which is bit odd. They are checked at 500 miles then 2000 or so then a bit longer to 12000. I think this is fair comment to insist on this, as if someone does grandprix starts every day it will show at 500 miles, so no problem with that. I will use the opportunity to say hi to Delroy who did my clutch. I am really impressed and these guys got me out of a nasty job which would have significantly dented my domestic standing.

The car is worth less than the price of the job, but I think that the price for the work involved is still too good to be true. Whatever they are paying Delroy, its not enough.