I once had a clutch cable break on me in central London around 6pm on a Fri=
day night. Since most spares places had shut, said the breakdown guy, so I =
drove without a clutch from near central point to Wokingham. Had no choice =
on some stops - real pain pulling away on the starter but one can do the sl=
ow roll to the lights but other drivers like pulling into the gap :(

I learnt to drive on an old manual, no sync on first, and later drove a vin=
tage bus, no sync on anything, so I had got use to driving with matching. S=
ince that clutch incident, I periodically practise no clutch driving just t=
o make sure I still can. So far, no music. Comes in handy from time to time=
 - tractors with near broken clutches etc. Worth knowing how to do it.


=20
On 2012-08-06, at 10:47 PM, RussellMc wrote:

> And from another friend:
>=20
> Subject: RE: [OT] Automatic is more fuel efficient than manual?
> To: RussellMc <apptechnz@gmail.com>
>=20
>=20
> Russell,
>=20
> I once had to drive my brother's Anglia van from Tokoroa to Auckland
> with no clutch (broken clutch arm).  Open road driving was easy but
> having to negotiate the small towns on the way and then Auckland
> suburbia (mercifully fairly late in the evening) was interesting to
> say the least.  By the time I got home I could pretty much change up
> and down at will without any obvious outward sign that I didn't have a
> clutch, and the only real problem was how to avoid having to stop
> altogether at lights and intersections  - involving some interesting
> detours through carparks and down side-streets when necessary.
>=20
> As it turned out that was excellent training many years later when the
> clutch died (slave cylinder seal) in our 20-seater Isuzu bus as we
> were just entering Wellsford heading north.  Normally that probably
> wouldn't have been a huge problem but in this case it was a long
> holiday weekend and there was a queue of traffic extending along
> highway 1 some km from the town.  Somehow we managed it (the bus can
> go very slowly in 1st) and again mercifully there is a back road that
> skirts around the western side of Wellsford that made life a lot
> easier once we reached the town itself.  Better still we came upon a
> commercial-vehicle garage on that road where the proprietor was
> working late and he was only too happy to help.  He didn't have the
> right seal but spent ages painstakingly searching through virtually
> his entire stock of seals (many hundreds) until he found one that he
> thought would do the job, machined the piston so it would fit, and
> then re-assembled and bled the system.  We were very grateful but
> expected a huge bill  - but he only charged us $20.  Even better  -
> the temporary repair lasted 10+ years.
>=20
> Regards,
>=20
> Ken
> --=20
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--=20
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