I've ran into some clutch issues recently, the car has been my daily. It sat for a month while I fixed a few odd things, then I had to visit a lot of places one evening, so was driving periodically for 3-4 hours. The engage point on the pedal kept decreasing, until I couldn't engage the clutch at all.

After crunching my way home, a few days later, I thought the rod in the slave cylinder had unwound somehow, so I extended the nut on the rod, and the car drove fine for all of 20 mins or so.

I had a spare master cylinder around, so replacing that was the next step, it didn't help.

I then ordered a slave cylinder, which arrived a few days ago. I flushed the fluid through completely. Still doesn't help, I only got 50m down the road before I could feel the pedal dissapear.

So my next thought was perhaps the throwout bearing. After pulling the gearbox, nothing is sticking out as particularly obvious

Below is the throwout bearing, are there meant to be ball bearings inside this?


The push fork (return springs aren't shown)


A couple of ball bearings I found on the ground, when removing the gearbox


The pressure plate looks fine


As do the clutch pads


This particular plate, the one sitting closer to the engine, has developed some ridges, perhaps the plate is getting stuck, locking the clutch? I ground down 1mm off these teeth the first time I installed it, as I was having problems getting it to release (though I think that problem came down to the clutch discs being slightly warped





I'm a little stumped at the next step, do I replace the throwout/release bearing?