Everything was fine until my mother complained the Kancil's (in case you are not from Malaysia, it is a first model launched by Malaysian carmaker, Perodua) gear was sticky. After roughly 2 days later, I tested the car's gear and discovered the problem: clutch did not disengage at all even with the pedal all the way down. Foot on the clutch, impossible to shift; foot on the clutch, engine stalled out when braking to a full stop; foot on the clutch, applied the gas and the car accelerate. Typically, the engine will freely vroom..vroom without the car speeding up if you gas it with the clutch to the floor, but in this case, it did built up speed. Oh well, that is bound to happen with a sticking clutch.
With the clutch kaput, obviously it was too dangerous to drive all the way to workshop (can you imagine pulling up at traffic light on steep grade...in heavy traffic?). With this in mind, we arranged for the car to be towed to workshop.
A week flitted by after the tow. Worry on whether the car will be back to its best crept in.
Just making sure the workshop had started the repair, I decided to pay a visit. The engine and gearbox were already hauled out when I arrived. The workshop mechanic already installed the new clutch, so I had a closer look at the old clutch the mechanic extracted.
Turned out it was the clutch plate at fault. The mechanic pointed out to me the plate spring (as you can see above) came loose causing mayhem. If I am going to hazard a guess: The spring blocked the clutch plate's full travel, leaving it in fully engaged mode at all time. Press the pedal all the way, the spring would not let the clutch pull away from the engine, resulting in a permanently engaged state.
Apart from replacing the clutch, the car needed a new pair of driveshaft (it was knocking when accelerating in curves), new alternator (noisy bearing), new battery and new radiator (it was already rusty so for peace of mind, out goes the old one).
I went to pick up the car yesterday and safe to say: The car is back in business. No unwanted surprises. Kudos to the mechanics.
