The rear main oil seal on my car has been leaking for a little while now. Nothing too major, but just enough to leave oil over parts of the lower section of the engine, mostly on the rear obviously - so something that needed sorted out at some point. As it requires the gearbox to be dropped out for access it would have made sense to have changed the clutch and probably the flywheel given that I'm just gone past 70,000 miles.
It was a job that Mark (GSi3.2) and I had talked about tackling at some point but with both of us being so very busy with work and home stuff, and 2.5 hours apart, it's something that we've simply not been able to sort out a time to do.
Of late the flywheel (at least I'm sure that's what it is) has been grumbling more and more (bl**dy DMF's!!) - judders at low revs/idling and the odd slip from the clutch when I've been a bit heavy with the right foot on occasions (although I have been generally driving lightly to be gentle on the clutch). The clutch won't have been helped by the oil leaking from the seal down the back of the engine into the bell housing and probably onto the friction plates.
So, given that I'll be driving up to the NE and clocking up 500+ miles (even more if I head up to Scotland too) I was just a little bit wary of doing that distance knowing that things weren't 100% and only likely to get worse.
So, I spoke to my local dealer today, who I get on very well with, to see what the best price they could do me on labour. They'd already agreed to give me a decent discount on the parts if I'd just been going to buy those - but they still came to over £800!! Thing is that given the mileage, and that the gearbox will be dropped anyway to do the oil seal, it would be stupid not to just replace both the clutch and flywheel no matter what condition they looked in.
The normal price for doing the whole shebang would have been £560 but they priced it to me at £400 - which equates to over 25% discount which I thought wasn't at all bad, so I snapped their arm off and got it booked in for Tuesday.
So, the question I have for anyone who's done a clutch and flywheel on a Vectra C / Signum - especially on the 2.0T - is whilst they have the gearbox and clutch etc. all off, is there anything else I should have replaced or at least looked at and checked to see if it needs replaced.
They're going to be replacing the clutch with the full clutch kit i.e. inc. slave, flywheel with new flywheel bolts and rear main oil seal.
Anything else while that lot is being done?
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