My Fit has developed some chatter when in neutral and is getting progressively worse.
I figured it might be the release bearing, however it does not match what I have read about diagnosing a bad release bearing.

Basically the chatter completely disappears when I depress the clutch. I feel no restriction or pulse in the clutch pedal.All shifts are clean and there is no slipping issues. Just a increasingly loud chatter in neutral.

Any thoughts or ideas on how to narrow down the real issue?
Could it be a simple as an adjustment to the linkage?
Thanks in advance

 

Throw out bearing noise. I'm surprised you haven't had it happen sooner. Ours has it for the second time.

Only fix is a new throw out bearing. Due to the work involved it makes sense to replace the entire clutch at the same time.

 

Made the mistake of taking it to the dealer 2 years ago for a new clutch, but I always wondered if they had replaced all the bearings at that time. As it always had a slight noise after that fix. About 20k miles since that clutch replacement.

To your knowledge will the throw-out bearing totally fail and leave me stranded or it mostly an annoyance until I can budget for this fix?

 

We ran ours with the noise for about 30k miles the first time. Been running it with the noise for about 10k for the second time now.

I would probably get some miles on the second clutch before replacing. The whole assembly from Exedy is about $140USD on amazon. It's the labor that hurts the budget.

 

Thanks for your quick reply. I hate to take it in for the clutch so soon unless it presents with other issues.

At the same time this has been going on there was a companion noise of a bad rattle when driving, but I finally found the cause of that which was a broken mount on the clam shell style heat shield for the exhaust. Easy fix just clamped it down with a large metal hose clamp.

Guess this heat shield rattle is also a very common issue.