My mother owns a BMW 325i from 2001 that has a clutch that was going bad. It first began with shuddering when accelerating, that stopped and it began making a loud screeching noise (as when metal is constantly scraping another metal object) and lastly, that noise stopped and it just began making a bit of a long scraping noise when shifting along with difficulties starting. To get it to start, the clutch pedal would have to be pushed a bit further down than usual, and it would start after 1 - 3 attempts. One day, it didn't want to start at all when she came to visit me, I tried by giving it a hard push and it turned on. And finally, it completely gave up just a few days ago and is stuck in NYC collecting tickets each day because neither of us have any money at the moment to resolve the issue. To make matters worse, the battery seemed to fail around the same time. We attempted to jump start it to no avail. We attempted to push start it, but also, nothing. This car has been quite a nightmare since she got it (I'll skip the rest for now as it may not yet be considered related). When you attempt to turn it on, it makes absolutely no noise other than a very feint click (only once).
My question is, is this failure to start related to the fact that the clutch may be completely shot, or something different? I have done research and all seems to point to the clutch switch, battery, etc, but when we attempted to push start it, a relative had already done the clutch bypass (not sure if this combination works).
Last edited by Kyros; 06-16-2017 at 06:03 PM.
Hello and welcome to the forum! Before spending any money, I would suggest getting the car's codes pulled. This diagnoses will give you a great place to start troubleshooting. I'm also attaching a link to our site's DIY tech articles on the E46 platform if you're going to be doing the work yourself. If you have any questions in regards to the procedures, feel free to post a Comment just below the article and one of our techs will get back to you with more specific details.
BMW 3-Series E46 (1999-2006) Technical Articles
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Thank you, originally thats what I had in mind, but since the battery went completely dead, the ECU seems to have reset, so it will not produce any codes until the car is run for a bit. Another stump would be getting the OBDII scanner/reader since we cannot take it to AutoZone or so.
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