Clutch pedal sticking following clutch replacement

[Zamora38]

I know the answer will probably be to go back to the garage but just wondered if anyone here has experienced a similar issue?

Had the clutch replaced on a Citroen Picasso 2.0 HDi around 3 weeks ago, since then the biting point feels different and the car seems to rumble a bit in first gear. Two days after the job was stationary in traffic and pressed the clutch down to go into first gear but the clutch pedal got stuck and wouldn't release, and the gear box became jammed as well.

By luck this happened very close to the garage in question and one of the engineers came along pulled up the clutch with his hand and pumped it a few times to get it going again. The garage looked over the car again, but couldn't find any leaks or faults, and after a few test runs it didn't repeat the problem.

Since that time the same thing has happened again twice, once each week, in both instances pulling the clutch back up and pumping it a bit gets it going again. Clearly something is up, just wondered if anyone has experienced similar or has any suggestions as to what the problem might be?

[411514]

Sounds hydraulic related. I think that yours has a hydraulic slave cylinder bolted to the gearbox which acts on the clutch release fork, and a pull-type release bearing which clips to the pressure plate spring fingers.

I seem to recall that the slave cylinder can become damaged if operated when the release bearing is not correctly engaged with the pressure plate spring fingers, basically as the slave cylinder piston overextends messing with the auto-adjust function. I wonder if after installing the clutch the garage did not initially correctly engage the release bearing before pressing the clutch pedal (it is a little tricky). That said, I did the same thing myself when installing a new clutch on my 2.0 Hdi, with no lasting damage.

For what it is worth, it doesn't sound like a particularly difficult/expensive problem. You might first even try just bleeding the slave cylinder.

[flying clutchman]

It would be very strange if the biting point didn't feel different after a clutch change! The problem you're experiencing is not at all uncommon when a new clutch is fitted. The problem is definitely hydraulic, although pinning it down can be slightly tricky. The obvious solution is to change the master cylinder, this could be giving problems as it now has to do twice as much work to operate the new clutch. This is not a fault of the garage it's just the way clutch hydraulics are sometimes