Hi,

My car was in a garage this week to look at 2 issues I had with problems with exhaust and heavy/shaking steering when braking and hitting 50mph.

The garage checked it out and couldn't find any issues, but found out that I have awater leak, no sure on total damge until they have a proper look and can then price up. What sort of water leak could this be?

Also, they said my clutch is buggered, and quoted 150 for part and £400 labour. Is this reasonable price for a new clutch on a W reg Focus or is this over priced????

Hi,

My car was in a garage this week to look at 2 issues I had with problems with exhaust and heavy/shaking steering when braking and hitting 50mph.

The garage checked it out and couldn't find any issues, but found out that I have awater leak, no sure on total damge until they have a proper look and can then price up. What sort of water leak could this be?

Also, they said my clutch is buggered, and quoted 150 for part and £400 labour. Is this reasonable price for a new clutch on a W reg Focus or is this over priced????

Hiya mate, sorry about the problems you've been having with your car. Did they give you a reason why they think your clutch has had it? Personally I feel this would have been noticable while driving it for a while before needing replacement. Did you experience any slip while driving? Or was it getting hard to engage gears/or the clutch biting point significantly higher than when you first had the vehicle?

The water leak could be the water pump or it could be one of the rubber hoses perished - did they advise anything else other than "you have a water leak"?

As far as the clutch goes, £400 labour sounds quite a lot to me if I'm honest. It depends on the vehicle and the amount of labour involved, I know of cars where the subframe has to be dropped to get to the gearbox/clutch but I'm not sure about the Focus...? I changed the clutch on my MK2 Punto last year and it took me 3 hours on the drive, but again there's also cars where there's much more work involved so this would put the price of labour right up.

Can I ask what year your Focus is and petrol or diesel? It might help the more experienced members (unlike me :D) to give you an answer.

Hope that helps a little bit for now,

Dan :)

I have noticed it a bit smelly/burning and it is a bit sticky/slow at coming back up. They didn't inform me of anymore on water leak, just said they will need to proper look at it.

My Focus is 2000 W reg.

Take it to another garage for a second opinion ,£400 sounds over the top for a clutch

Absolutely try another garage for a quote on the clutch replacement, like Preee said £400 is way over the top for a clutch job.

My Mum's boyfriend has a 2001 Focus estate 1.6 Zetec and he's terrible on the clutch, he has no mechnical sympathy and he paid £250 for labour and £100 for a clutch kit at an independent garage (quite well known in my area) so it's worth shopping around to get the cheapest quote you can. He will probably need it doing again in 10,000 miles he's that bad :D lol.