Strange wear on pressure plate

[steve_m]

Recently my 1.9tdi Golf started making a horrible noise from the gearbox area accompanied by vibrations through the clutch pedal. These symptons would come and go with a gap of either several weeks or several days. When it was occuring it would only be at idle and low revs, if the revs where lifted it went away. Taking it to a local garage they suspected that the dual mass flywheel was on its way out and having read various bits of information from the internet this seemed like a sensible conclusion. However when they stripped everything down they found no problems with the flywheel and a clutch with plenty of life in it. The thing they did spot was some strange wear on the pressure plate, as you can see in the photo below there are nine studs forming an inner ring, three of these seem to have been coming in to contact with the gearbox causing the top of them to suffer wear and presumably causing the noise and vibrations (top left of the main photo).

Overall view,


Detailed views,






The clutch and plate has now been replaced but it seems that there is still a slight problem (although nothing like as severe). The garage doesn't know what else to suggest to sort it out or why it occured in the first place or why it is only on those three studs.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before or have any ideas? Any suggestions will be gratefully recieved.

Thanks in advance,
Steve

[Col]

Either the pressure plate was original not evenly tightened or the DMF is in fact on it way out and not 'true'.

Strange one. I've had completely worn and some missing pressure fingers before on car where just the clutch disc only had been previously replaced but can only think in your case that the DMF is not running true and is in effect 'buckled' slightly which would explain why only 3 studs worn.

This could explain it if the studs were sitting on the high spot. As it is still doing it although reduced I'd say the DMF.

[steve_m]

Thanks, that does sound like a feasible explanation and I am leaning towards the DMF as the issue it was just that the mechanic who examined it was sure that it was ok. The three pressure fingers that are worn are the three in the top left hand quarter of the first photo. The noise it is producing has gone from being loud and almost constant to a quiet, intermitant 'snick' type sound. There is clearly still some contact and I suspect that the next step will be to replace the DMF unless anyone has an alternative suggestion.
Thanks again,
Steve