The definitive Pedal Box Thread

[lupo1.0se]

From the above "The VW website says that recalls are forever. The recall is listed on the recall list and my chassis number is in the range listed. "

Do you have a chassis number range as that would help some people out knowing about this fault. My black 1.0se had the issue and i got it repaired (at the time not knowing the about bIg F comment above). Whereas the GTi i have (2005) is still on its orignal (car on close to 70k).

Also to note Vw was supposed to transfer the parts to hertiage. The part number is not listed here, i will see if i can find it so i can cross reference it.

[bIg F]

Sorry for the late reply on this, but a lot has happened.

Cant find the website that showed my chassis number being in the range of the recall, it was on my Wife's iPad, and we can't find it even though the history is not wiped for the browser.

However, this site seems to have some information that VW seem to have conveniently lost. https://car-recalls.co.uk/recall/vw-polo-clutch-operation-may-be-affected/

Also, here is VW UK's own site proclaiming that recalls are forever. https://www.vw.com/en/recalls/recall-faq.html

This is their own VIN look up for recalls, which apparently, my car does not exist as my VIN is invalid.  https://www.vw.com/en/recalls.html

I contacted VW UK to investigate the requirement to have to bring the car in to the dealers to have it investigated.  They replied with a very badly written replies, now I am no punctuation god, but even I know that sentences work better when you use all the words needed to make one, missing out words like "and" or "the" or just connective words that help make it legible really help.

The emails received all read like they were thrown into Google translator twice.

Essentially, VW see no fault of their own and think it is perfectly reasonable to make me pay £150 to have the car trailered to the dealers to then have them investigate with "diagnostic systems" that only VW have, to find the fault.

I as a Mechanical engineer with quite a few decades of experience, diagnosed the fault, to be fair it's fairly obvious the part was not actually made correctly.  The dealers agreed with me when I took the clutch ear in to show them, as it was completely separated from the rest of the assembly.

In a nutshell, the weld that is supposed to be the main structural point is not welded, and the two parts were only held by the paint filling the gap in the weld and two very under performing spot welds that were not full thickness.

The only good news so far is the dealers think the £90 investigation fee won't apply.

 

I pointed out to VAG UK that they are still bound by the UK Sales of Goods Act, where in an item must be   1. As described.  2. Fit for purpose. 3. Of reasonable Quality.

This part fails two points. I advised the approach from them seemed silly, due to the costs involved being higher than just buying another part and fitting it. Their whole sales point seems to be that the dealers will fit it for free...........

So where we stand now is, the dealers want the car and don't care that it costs more than the part to get it there, or they'll sell me another part at cost and say goodbye to the issue.

Not a great set of options.

So I fitted my own take on the Bulkhead adaptor and now have a working clutch with silky smooth changes and no notchy grinding gear changes, all with the added bonus of no slippy clutch.

The car will be driven to the dealers on Monday, I conveniently work 400 m away from it. The Dealers are then going to fit a new box and let me have the car back.

They seem to have forgotten that there is one part that VAG no longer stock, namely the brake pedal clip thing that you have to sacrifice to remove the pedal box.

I am kind of thinking that they'll try and find something that needs fixing to try and off set things still, but as the car has done a fair few miles with my modification, I can't see that they really find anything mission ending.

The Killer thing is VAG UK want me to complete a Customer Satisfaction Survey............ I'm putting that off as they probably won't like it.   My previous contact with VAG was utterly flawless, although that was with VAG Germany, so maybe next time I will contact the mother ship instead.

 

Anyways   on to the pictures which should help you guys.

Showing the original 1999 pedal box viewed from above, looking thorough the dash, you can see the Clutch ear is not really attached any more.

 

A more close up view of the break, seen from above position.

 

Close up, you can see the rust build up from years of wet shoes and the fresh tear in the metal when it finally gave up.

The hole pulled from the ear when the main weld gave up (the bang noise)

 

The view from the other side, showing the hole in the Box and the spot welds still fastened and the metal around them having failed

All exactly what you would expect from the failure.

 

Now on to the new part.

The clutch ear when I removed the clutch cable, it simply fell into the footwell.

You can see the spot welds are smooth indicating they did not fully penetrate both parts, this could be due to time on place or current, either way it shouldn't have happened.

You can also see the slight texture to the paint on the right where the weld is supposed to be.

Bad VW your QC checks didn't see this.  Cant believe that I would be the only person experiencing this. If they follow standard QC of at least ISO9001 then they will have missed quite a few potentially, unless the operator noticed, beforehand.

 

On to my Fix.

The bulkhead with the clutch cable removed and the excess body panel sealer removed and sound deadening pulled back.

 

The yellow marks indicate a recessed part of the pressing that makes this section of the bulkhead, its not visible in the picture as the light is crap and you cant get a decent angle with all the other stuff in the way.

 

My Part made from 5 mm steel plate. The yellow lines are where I cut it to fit finally after the first cuts were made using Cardboard Aided Design.

The cable on the Polo is non-self adjusting on the UK Polo. Once the 5 mm adaptor and the extra distance required to connect to the pedal is added there is not enough room to get the gear box end fitted, so a little change is required. 

Not my picture, as mine didn’t come out that well.  The area circled in yellow is the gear box end adjuster it needs to be slid down to the end of the cable to reveal the outer cable where you need to remove 1 cm of the outer to give the cable enough length to attach to the gearbox.

 

Not actually the correct cable but for illustration purposes the metal nut looking part in the yellow circle, which is plastic on VW Polo factory cables, needs sliding off.

Once off, you can trim with a knife 1 cm of the plastic outer to reveal the inner metal bit. Then you need to cut it off.  Pop the cable in a Vice with enough of the sliver metal coil that makes the inner above the top of the vice jaws then, using a metal file, file the area flat.  The metal is not that hard, so very quickly you'll end up with a gap and then you can remove the little "c's" of metal easily with a screwdriver pushed into the gaps, giving them a little twist.  Then it's just a matter of pushing the end back on, and you have 10 mm extra on your cable.

Pop the end through the adaptor plate and hook it on the pedal, then attach at the gear box and set the clutch. Just for good measures, pop some exterior grade mastic or car body seal on to the adaptor to stop it wandering and or water finding it's way in.

I fully expect this mod to continue to work for the life of the car and was expecting to refit it once the car is back with me as quite frankly I don't trust the replacement parts from VW.

It's a shame that VW Heritage are not making these as I know the company they would be using to make them and their work is top-notch. There would be a very good chance they would have advised better/more welds as part of the evaluation and test manufacture stage of building a production run for the part.

I will post again once VW have either fixed the car or not, as it may be.

 

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by bIg F

[bIg F]

Its been a while,  the car is one the road and I have put 4 tanks of fuel through it since the fix.

The Dealers were able to get the part fitted and give me a working car again.

it was how ever a bit of a saga.

Firstly,  VW have as we know delisted the sacrificial plastic part that fits on the brake pedal.  So they tried to get one and couldn't… VAG  UK searched all the UK dealerships and didnt find one. They were looking at having one shipped from the states as there is a fair few over there due to them being fitted to the VR6 and it being popular over there. But postage was apparently a no-no.  Eventually at the 11 hour VAG found one in the Swindon dealership, you know the one next door to the actual VW HQ.  

Prior to that VAG categorically would not buy one off the internet from one of the sites that has stock of the NOS  parts, as they said why would we pay inflated prices for something we made and sold to the third party. I even suggested that I buy one and accidentally leave it on the parts counter where they might find it, this was also not something they wanted to do. 

 

The new pedal box is obviously better made and the welded parts are, well more welded.  Again reinforcing the theory that the replacement was old stock that should have been junked, after the remake and improvements.

 

When I got the car back initially the clutch felt high and wasn't great to drive on long journeys, when you are tall and the seat is already as far back as it will go.  That soon changed once it bedded in and I now have the familiar slack before the cable starts pulling the clutch.

Still get the  very occasional crunch when putting it in reverse but thats more down to me than the car I think.  The pedal still makes the same squeak sound, that the old box did ,which does concern me, so my fix it part is a permanent resident in the glove box just in case.

The Dealers did state that if VW had not been able to find the plastic part , that under their own rules they would have to find a replacement car  for me, probably something from the trade in pool that was similar.   And I would still legally own my existing car so that would be mine also. 

That said I  was told by the dealers that the pedal box was also due to be delisted, essentially making every Lupo or Polo with a pedal box failure potential scrap.

So this got me thinking about the future of these cars.  

 

I have been playing with a design of part that will remove the need to take the pedal box out and will give the OEM feel back to a broken pedal box. As my plate fix was great but the pedal position was not  right.

The idea of the part is that someone can make or cheaply have made the part and with minimal tools or knowledge just pop it in and get back to driving.

 

I will post the plans here once I am happy with it and then others can use them to fix their cars.

 

[dion_dublin_enthusiast]

Hi there

 

Adding on to this master thread in the hope anyone is still lurking...

 

Clutch pedal box issue, as described by everyone else. Car is at about 45,000 miles (!!) and so not unexpected that it was due to snap. Clutch was heavily worn too, so pedal was doing a lot of work.

 

It seems it's not possible to get a replacement pedal box at all. The proposition at the garage is to Mig weld it back together (the break doesn't seem catastrophic from what we can see so far) and potentially reinforce with a plate if possible.

 

I'd replace the clutch too, to put as little burden on the new weld as possible.

 

My question is this - is it worth it at all?

 

I'm looking at about £800 all-in, to get it back on the road with the labour to get at the pedal box through the removing the steering column and then the new clutch.

 

Will the welds just give out again? I read people describing just that, and if so, how long can I reasonably expect this solution to last?

 

If I am likely to get another 50,000 miles out of it fairly comfortably, then that's one thing, but if it's likely to bust again after 5,000 miles then it's a different matter.

[bIg F]

2 hours ago, dion_dublin_enthusiast said:

Hi there

 

Adding on to this master thread in the hope anyone is still lurking...

 

Clutch pedal box issue, as described by everyone else. Car is at about 45,000 miles (!!) and so not unexpected that it was due to snap. Clutch was heavily worn too, so pedal was doing a lot of work.

 

It seems it's not possible to get a replacement pedal box at all. The proposition at the garage is to Mig weld it back together (the break doesn't seem catastrophic from what we can see so far) and potentially reinforce with a plate if possible.

 

I'd replace the clutch too, to put as little burden on the new weld as possible.

 

My question is this - is it worth it at all?

 

I'm looking at about £800 all-in, to get it back on the road with the labour to get at the pedal box through the removing the steering column and then the new clutch.

 

Will the welds just give out again? I read people describing just that, and if so, how long can I reasonably expect this solution to last?

 

If I am likely to get another 50,000 miles out of it fairly comfortably, then that's one thing, but if it's likely to bust again after 5,000 miles then it's a different matter.

Cant belive its been a year since i posted on this thread. The replacent box is still working but is at time starting to creak like the original one, so I fear it will go at some point.

To  be fair I would no way pay that amount of money to get mine fixed.   Yes is a ball ache of a job and the money is time. But the only difficult bit is removing the security bolts.  If you are in no way mechanically minded then thats a different matter.  

Welding wont work unless you spend a lot of time and effort welding in extra strengtheners and supports.  The metal will be stressed to much and its crappy steel to start with.   To do it properly it would require a lot of fitting then removal to make sure you get clearances right. By the time you did it it would be quicker to make a new one, which you can still buy from VAG.   Provided you can even get the brake pedal clip as I supposedly had  the last one the VAG UK had, you are going to need to pay the eBay scalpers prices.  There is no way round it AFAIK when removing the box as the part is sacrificial

Not a worry if you want to swap the whole lot out for a Willwood set up instead. 

Just get a competent engineering type to maker the adapter as I did for my Polo.  Lupo and Polo share the same genesis so its not that much different.  The adaptor took me about 30 mins to make including a cardboard prototype template.  The metal cost IIRC was about £10 for enough metal bar  to make about 50 of them.  I did cad up a potential prototype, which if made  would make a it a drop in fit for the Polo, returning the clutch to the correct pedal hight, which would far out last the OEM.

 

I need to dig out the cad and publish it here so someone might try it out or improve on it.  I was going to 3d print one to test size etc then get one made in metal. Never did as the box still works, currently.

[Rich]

The part is not sacrificial, it can be saved and it really isn't rocket science to do so. 

There's even two different ways to go about it, maybe more but that's just silly.

Majority of the time though, I just brace the servo with a spanner and yank the pedal back because it's quick and easy. 

[dion_dublin_enthusiast]

42 minutes ago, bIg F said:

Cant belive its been a year since i posted on this thread. The replacent box is still working but is at time starting to creak like the original one, so I fear it will go at some point.

To  be fair I would no way pay that amount of money to get mine fixed.   Yes is a ball ache of a job and the money is time. But the only difficult bit is removing the security bolts.  If you are in no way mechanically minded then thats a different matter.  

Welding wont work unless you spend a lot of time and effort welding in extra strengtheners and supports.  The metal will be stressed to much and its crappy steel to start with.   To do it properly it would require a lot of fitting then removal to make sure you get clearances right. By the time you did it it would be quicker to make a new one, which you can still buy from VAG.   Provided you can even get the brake pedal clip as I supposedly had  the last one the VAG UK had, you are going to need to pay the eBay scalpers prices.  There is no way round it AFAIK when removing the box as the part is sacrificial

Not a worry if you want to swap the whole lot out for a Willwood set up instead. 

Just get a competent engineering type to maker the adapter as I did for my Polo.  Lupo and Polo share the same genesis so its not that much different.  The adaptor took me about 30 mins to make including a cardboard prototype template.  The metal cost IIRC was about £10 for enough metal bar  to make about 50 of them.  I did cad up a potential prototype, which if made  would make a it a drop in fit for the Polo, returning the clutch to the correct pedal hight, which would far out last the OEM.

 

I need to dig out the cad and publish it here so someone might try it out or improve on it.  I was going to 3d print one to test size etc then get one made in metal. Never did as the box still works, currently.

 

Firstly yes - I'm not mechanically minded to the extent that I can do this work myself, but I guess I am to the extent that I feel comfortable making an informed decision on it. Hoping that adding onto this thread can help steer others in similar positions with less and less formal support out there nowadays.

It's a curious situation cost-wise anyway, because the car came to me after a family member got too old to drive it. So it's essentially cost me nothing up to this point, and £800 to have an otherwise good-order Lupo with less than 50k miles on the clock and a brand new clutch doesn't feel impossible to make work.

But you seem to be very much against the weld option. I am concerned it will soften the metal too much.

There is also this from over at Club polo: https://www.clubpolo.co.uk/topic/305623-alternative-polo-pedal-box-fix-cheap-easy-and-tough/

What is your adapter? As in, what is it adapting? (Edit: sorry, it's late - yes your plate/adapter above is what I was referring to when I mentioned a 'plate'. But you don't weld that to the box? Is it simply held in by the cable's own pressure?)

Willwood would cost the same as scalpers.

Edited August 19 by dion_dublin_enthusiast

[dion_dublin_enthusiast]

40 minutes ago, Rich said:

The part is not sacrificial, it can be saved and it really isn't rocket science to do so. 

There's even two different ways to go about it, maybe more but that's just silly.

Majority of the time though, I just brace the servo with a spanner and yank the pedal back because it's quick and easy. 

Oh - this is quite a different outlook on it to Big F. You reckon go ahead with the weld then?

 

What are the two different ways to go about it? (Am I missing this from earlier posts in this thread?)

 

Edit: and if bracing with a spanner (which I guess is a less customised version of Big F's plate adapter) do you typically affix that around the opening or just let the pressure of the cable and its head hold it in place?

Edited August 19 by dion_dublin_enthusiast

[bIg F]

Ok so welding is a real  take a chance, I know several people who weld professionally, and I dont mean just weld a few bits of 2mm body steel on to old cars. One is a coded welder who does it for the military. All agree it can work but unless the weld is even thickness and doesnt thermally change the metal it will stress along the weld and break again.  Thats part of the reason the original is spot welds witn a small seam weld performed by an N C welder.

My option, both versions negate the need to remove the pedal box. You only need to remove  the under dash cover and the clutch cable, fit the adaptor and then refit the cable. That way there is no need to mess with the security bolts and the brake pedal clip.  
 

when you disconnect the clutch cable chances are the clutch cable ear will fall off as the bang when it breaks is the weld failing on it. Once the ear is gone you have room to reconnect the cable and you are hood to go.

I tried the spanner approach as Rich suggested but mine failed any way.  Two different senior mechanics at two VW dealers stated that VAG see it as a disposable, so the fact that you can save it with a bit of luck and some know how is not what VAG wanted.  

 

[Rich]

I brace to break the clip.

But the clip can be pushed through from the inside to stay attached to the servo and remove from the pedal itself without breaking it.

I have welded a lot of them and never heard of repeat death. 

He is right that a reinforcing bracket atop the original design is needed sometimes. 

[mk2]

Would it be possible to save that brake pedal clip by removing the servo from the outside first? A lot more work, but in theory it'd be possible to get to the clip through the servo hole in the bulkhead. Make any sense? It might be possible to unclip the little tabs holding it in place. Just thinking aloud here having not tried it.

[dion_dublin_enthusiast]

54 minutes ago, Rich said:

I brace to break the clip.

But the clip can be pushed through from the inside to stay attached to the servo and remove from the pedal itself without breaking it.

I have welded a lot of them and never heard of repeat death. 

He is right that a reinforcing bracket atop the original design is needed sometimes. 

It's seeming like the weld might be the best option. Garage is getting to the point where they can't really keep it any longer so I need to make a call.

 

Do you remove the pedal box to weld it or have you welded any with the pedal box still in there?

[Rich]

As a general rule of thumb I removed the pedalbox to weld it as asides from the two shear bolts for the column it is very straightforward to remove. 

Even those annoyances aren't that bad.

[bIg F]

If you go the welding route, make sure it’s not stick weld (arc) as this is very heat intensive and will lead to uneven thermal levels in the two bits of metal, and its a crappy weld.   There is a reason we call them tractor welds, so often used on farm machinery, where its more about getting it stuck together and appearance is irrelevant.  Mig is better as you can dial down the power and weld with minimum power and heat, and its stronger.
Tig is far better as its like mig but even cleaner and thermally stable but many garages don't have that option.

Absolutely don't get it welded in the car.  Your welder person will for starters have to be some kind of miniature contortionist to get in there and the risk of a fire is very real,  seen a few peoples cars go up, because they thought they would be ok with a bit of damp rag and some luck.  

Decent garages will 100% not weld inside the cabin of a car without removing seats and carpet at a minimum due to the risk. 
 

A friend of mine can bear witness to that when the restoration his car was undergoing went up in flames because they cur corners on the final assembly after a 4 month rebuild, the whole rear of the car was burnt to a crisp, and their insurance didnt cover it as the cctv showed the mechanic welding with it all assembled.  One VW with some rare OEM options reduced to scrap.

[dion_dublin_enthusiast]

I thought I'd post an update here, for two reasons - one simply to share the update, but, secondly, to signpost and link directly to earlier posts in this thread so that people coming to this from Google etc are able to get to the relevant parts quickly and make informed decisions.

Firstly, things have moved on a fair bit since earlier posts in this thread. It's basically impossible to get a new VW pedal box, at least quickly, anyway. Maybe they're still out there, but every VW parts dealer we rang in central London couldn't get hold of one. There are, of course, grifters on eBay selling them for £250-300.

 

This means the options left for most people in a situation where it's snapped out on the road, and they've been recovered to a garage, are:

(a) welding or bolting the clutch cable bracing ear back on, ideally with a reinforcing plate to give it a better chance, because even the new pedal boxes are described earlier in this thread, by @bIg F here in 2023, as being still very weak - this requires removing the pedal box, which itself requires removing the steering column, a difficult task that is much discussed in several earlier posts in this thread. Potentially 4-5 hours work (i.e., expensive - in southeast UK, possibly £500+) for a mechanic who hasn't done it before;

or

(b) using the stronger metal of the car's bulkhead to brace the plastic/rubber grommet that carries the clutch cable to the clutch pedal, as also described earlier in this thread, first by @robertiles here in 2012, then again by @Slammedrollerskate here in 2021, and illustrated with photos and a specifically-cut bit of metal by @bIg F here in 2023. Essentially it requires finding a piece of metal big enough to cover and brace against the hole in the bulkhead and with a hole in its centre just big enough to allow the pedal-side part of the plastic grommet to pass through. I will add some photos below to make understanding this and showing this to a mechanic quick and easy.

 

Although (b) was described by @robertiles back in 2012 as 'not as good as a new pedal box', this doesn't necessarily seem to be the case, with a bunch of people sure that it is perhaps even stronger.

 

I was on the verge of going through with the weld. Garage was thinking the clutch would have been worn and wanted to replace that too (which @elajf1 warned would be what garages would tell people, in the thread's first post), of course about £450. So I was looking at £800-1,000 all-in to get the car back on the road.

What swung me was seeing this video on YouTube, and this one, both showing the bulkhead-brace fix - i.e., option (b) above. It makes it very obvious to even a non-technical person what the fix is doing, and how easy it is. It shouldn't take a mechanic more than 30-40 minutes, and requires basically no disassembly beyond taking off the engine splash shield (the plastic 'lid') to make access easier. Finding an appropriate piece of metal could take a little while, but there will be something lying about - the key thing is it doesn't want to be much thicker than about 5mm - as there's not enough slack in the clutch cable to be able to accommodate anything thicker.

 

Here are some photos to help:

 

(1) The hole in the bulkhead in question is located just below here, marked with a red circle. Removing the engine's plastic splash cover makes it easier to access.

 

(2) Here's the hole, closer up and visible, circled in red. In the green square is the plastic grommet for the clutch cable that needs to be braced (and that was formerly braced by the now-broken pedal box 'ear'). What's needed is a piece of metal that can brace this grommet against the bulkhead, while allowing the cable to pass through the hole in the bulkhead.

 

(3) This is the idea - any old piece of metal can do (for the time being, at least). Here's my fix with the piece in place. It can be glued to hold and prevent water ingress between the two metal parts and to hold it there while the cable is reattached, but it will also hold itself from the pressure of the clutch cable once it's taut. The pedal end of the cable can now be connected to the pedal.

 

(4) The final thing is to obtain a little bit more slack in the clutch cable - because it's now routed in such a way that it travels a slightly longer distance, the cable as it is won't have enough slack to be able to be connected properly at the engine end. @bIg F above suggests filing down the piece circled in red below. See that post for good description of that. But there are a few ways of getting the slack, including a fair bit just from the freeplay in the coil (see (5) below).

 

 

(5) To do that, you'll need to remove the plastic nuts off the engine end of the clutch cable (they would have been where the green squiggles are in the photo). Others have suggested you can also file down a little bit the plastic part here, too (red arrow). But bringing the coil in a little bit also gives some slack (blue arrow).

 

 

And that's it, really. It's good to drive, probably for the life of the car.

 

My clutch now feels brilliant. Bite point is right up high, no crunching into reverse, no stiffness into any gear.

 

---

I posted the above to hopefully save some people some £ and stress.

 

I have some questions though:

 

(i) My sense is that, ideally, the brace plate should be as large as possible, within the limits of the moulded bulkhead panel, to distribute the stress as widely as possible. Current piece of metal is only just wider than the bulkhead hole itself. Should I worry about this, and re-fit a new plate now the car drives and time is less precious?

(ii) How does what this mechanic has done at the engine/coil end of the cable look? The second nut wouldn't go on any further. Should I try to tidy this up, too?

(iii) I get a little bit of light grating sound from the clutch when I depress the clutch now. Is this just the throwout bearing giving notice that it'll be on its way out soon or is this something induced by the fix?

 

Cheers to all, glad to have this forum.

 

Edited August 22 by dion_dublin_enthusiast
noticed one photo was incorrectly rotated, fixed it

[bIg F]

Could be the bearing, mine can be a bit noisy also but has been that way for years. So chances are yours will bee the same. Thrust bearings tend to get so loud you’d need to change for your own sanity before it a tually fails.

Great work there compiling it all into one thread. I really hope this helps more owners.
 

With my plate I used 5mm steel so no flex,at all.  But that said you could probably do it with thiner then add a bigger piece over the top spot welded to the first piece,  which could bridge the recess the first plate sits in. That way the load would be spread even more over the substantially stronger bulkhead.
 Using that method I cant see it failing before the car is no longer road useable or they just out right ban petrol cars from the road.

Looking at other manufacturers who used similar gear box set ups a d in some cases actual VW gearboxes none I have checked used VW’s Polo/Lupo method add used a bulkhead brace or thick plate bolted to the bulkhead.   What I-see here is VAG dropped the ball and then just pretended it was ok.