Brief clutch pedal failure

Greeting and Happy New Year Campers,

On the way to a New Years rally this afternoon our 2006 Peugeot Nuevo clutch pedal started to stick to the floor as if the return spring had snapped. It could be pulled up with a toe. After half a while of kangaroo hopping at high revs we stopped in petrol station and called Adrian Flux.
There was a couple of hours delay until the recovery vehicle arrived, but almost as soon as I had called for help the clutch pedal began to return to full function. So mush so that the recovery man drove it up the ramps, and after being dropped at home I was able to reverse the van and park on the drive.
No chance of a mechanic being available for a week, but we would like to know if anyone else has had this terrifying problem, and what caused and cured it.

Best Wishes 

Peter and Janet

PS I did check the pedal for chewing gum, draped wires and drips.

This is another of many well known problems with these vans, we lost our clutch pedal a couple of years ago when it suddenly just dropped to the floor, learned later from the recovery driver that if you can get your toe under the pedal you can lift it up & proceed until it happens again, a helpful tip if you find yourself stuck on the side of the road like we were, think it was the clutch slave cylinder from memory, really common and well known issue and failure of which these Sevel vans have many inherent issues.

Thanks CC,
Brilliant answer.
First job tomorrow is to phone the garage and get everything changeable renewed. Ours didn’t just lose rebound once, it did it for half an hour. Wouldn’t like to be stuck in the 4th lane of a motorway by a fault that could recur at any time. It is very difficult to go anywhere if changing up stalls the engine. 

Thanks Peter, and good camping in ‘24.

In the days of clutch cables which would snap without warning in older vehicles my late father taught both me and my brother how to change gear in such a situation. Going down the box 2nd to 3rd etc you take your foot
Of the excelerator and with a little pressure on the leaver it will slide into gear with no issues. Going up the box ( hope I’ve got this up and down the correct way round ) again foot of the excelerator but a few little revs while pressure to the lever and it will again slide in with no issues.
All this takes a little practice and of course if you have to completely stop you not going to get it moving again unless your on a downward slope to gather some speed.

Thanks Suppersready,

Takes me back to the days of double declutching. It turns out the clutch is hydraulic, but your system should still work.
My garage was on at 8 this morning. They reckon it could be the master cylinder, so they will change it next Wednesday. Bang goes another months pension.

Happy New Year

Peter

And takes me back to the early 1960s when the clutch cable on my 4th-hand Beetle snapped. I lived on top of a very, very steep hill facing downwards, so getting going was no problem. But if I were to have to stop (by stalling) at a junction or in traffic when en route to the garage in town [Aberystwyth] I wouldn't be able to restart. So I set off on the 5 minute journey at about 05:00 and managed not to stop until outside the garage. Happy days!

Peterm wrote:Thanks CC,
Brilliant answer.
First job tomorrow is to phone the garage and get everything changeable renewed. Ours didn’t just lose rebound once, it did it for half an hour. Wouldn’t like to be stuck in the 4th lane of a motorway by a fault that could recur at any time. It is very difficult to go anywhere if changing up stalls the engine. 

Thanks Peter, and good camping in ‘24.

Hope you get it sorted, nothing worse than having these kind of issues cropping up especially when we all have such low mileage vehicles, they should be much more reliable, wouldn’t be so bad if when they went wrong they were easy to get fixed, some seem to think it’s perfectly acceptable and defend the manufacturers, instead of calling them out for the unreliable troublesome vehicles they actually are. No wonder they don’t improve.

55000 Peter. The master cylinder is made of plastic it seems. It 18 years old now and we had the clutch changed in May.

To be fair the base vehicle has been as reliable as I we 
would expect. However if safety involved parts are known to have a life, as the timing belt does, I would expect them to be retrospectively included in the service manual.

I take CC’s point about reliability. If vehicles lasted longer then we possibly could have avoided some of the extreme weather we have now and the panic about the climate.

The problem I have found today with the roof leak is not due to the mileage but entirely to a cascade failure from a faulty fitting the roof light in the factory. Such problems that we STILL hear of on every rally.

Happy New Year to you and Chris.

Peter and Janet

If he's happy to let us know, I'd be interested to know the mileage of Peter M's van?

Peter Brown wrote:If he's happy to let us know, I'd be interested to know the mileage of Peter M's van?

In case you missed it Peter- Peterm has edited his previous post to add 55,000!
Happy New Year!

I had Liam, thanks and its very good to hear from you again - I hope all goes well with Wendy and yourself.

PeterM, knowing the amount of use that you get out of your van I'm surprised the mileage is so low.

Hopefully catch up with you both sometime this year.

The odometer is probably not working properly as well. Makes the fuel consumption look better.

Finale - I hope. 
£315 to change both the master and slave cylinder, which is fortunately outside the gear box. Labour £54 ph.

Just off to an early Burns Rally with the TTC. So we hope it works.

Thanks for all the advice.

P&J

TTC ?

I think he meant TCC - Touring Caravan Club that I know he rallies with.

Peter Brown wrote:I think he meant TCC - Touring Caravan Club that I know he rallies with.

I did wonder if that was what was meant. I tried lots of variation but couldn't match it to a club.

No it’s the Touring Tranvestites Club. We only go for the quizzes of course.

Peterm wrote:No it’s the Touring Tranvestites Club. We only go for the quizzes of course.

I could post some interesting photos of you but probably should not!!

If you haven't seen the pictures at the link below; I think we were probably sharing the canoe behind the photographer of picture 5 - happy days.

https://www.asoc.uk.com/eventinfo.html

Thanks Pete, that really was a day and a holiday to remember. Thanks for the memories.