Honda Civic 1.8 I-VTEC Part five: fitting a LUK clutch kit.

PART FIVE: The clutch always seemed to bite high – at 110,000 miles, is it finally worn out? Andrew Everett oversees the replacement.

Ever since we’ve had our 2006 Civic, I’ve felt that the clutch hasn’t been ‘right’. It’s light enough but has quite a high bite – when travelling along with the engine under light load you didn’t have to push the pedal down very far to get it to slip. All symptoms of a worn clutch centre plate.

Being a front-drive car with a transverse engine, fitting a new clutch promised to be real fun – they are never easy. That’s why I farmed this job out to Parkside Garage in Worksop, primarily a BMW specialist though they do look after a couple of Civics like ours.

Unlike a lot of FWD cars, the Civic has been designed with simple gearbox removal in mind. There is no awkward front subframe to remove and the engine only has to drop down a tad on the gearbox end to pull the box past the inner wing. Of course, it’s hard work – the driveshafts have to come out, balljoints separated, and so on – but for a FWD clutch, it’s far from the horror show that many are.

Working on the ground

It’s also doable with the car on the ground, supported on axle stands with a trolley jack under the sump. The Civic has equal-length driveshafts meaning that, like many FWD cars, the driver’s side shaft fits into an intermediate driveshaft that runs from the gearbox to a mount on the back of the engine. That’s no problem though as the shafts are easily ‘sprung’ out of the ’box with a pry bar or tyre lever.

If you’re doing the job with the car on an angle you’ll need to drain the gearbox oil first as it will run out once the driveshafts are popped out.