New clutch, car is abysmal to drive

[tamrat]

We have terrible repair shops, privilege of living in a third world country. When you go to one with a problem, you leave it with ten other new problems.

My 2009 Yaris has more than 160,000KMs on the odometer. It has been running almost flawlessly since I bought it with about 100,000KMs on it 3 years ago. Recently it started to make a faint rubbing noise whenever I engaged the clutch. Right of the bat I understood it must be a release bearing issue. As the days passed the noise became a loud screeching noise. Gear changes became awkward, especially in traffic, since the noise it made drew everyone's attention.

I knew how to do a clutch job, but I didn't have the time or the tools (power tools really) to do the job at home. So I took it to a shop. I got myself 'OEM' parts for it (this is a hit or miss in my country, what's usually branded as OEM is some Chinese rip off). New pressure plate, new clutch disk and a throw out/release bearing.

Sure enough the old release bearing was a toast. It was in pieces. I have noticed that the old pressure plate had more smaller springs while the new one had fewer but bigger/wider springs. The old clutch disk had four damping springs, and the new one had three. I didn't care much about this because this was probably a transmission that's used by a lot of other Toyota models throughout the years and there might be subtle changes. "As long as it fit right, there shouldn't be a problem," I thought. The new parts were swapped in and while at it, new gearbox oil as well.

I didn't notice much on my way back home since I was exhausted. The only thing I noticed was how light the clutch pedal felt. I thought this was due to the fact that the mechanism was cleaned and greased before being put back in. But this morning, I noticed that 1st gear and second gear are sort of difficult to shift into. The biting point for the clutch is also unpredictable. Sometimes it bites as soon as I start lifting my foot, sometime it bites midway. Gear shifts have this unsettling snap to them. It feels like you won't get it back out of that gear.

Now I don't know if any of this is normal (I hope its not). The old clutch was such a delight to drive. Apart from the noise it started to make at the end, it was very smooth. Gear changes required minimal effort. There are a lot of things going in my head. Maybe they left the pressure plate bolts loose, or its not tight enough (I don't know why I didn't take my torque wrench to the shop). Maybe the so called OEM parts are not so OEM, and its just a weak pressure plate. Maybe the oil they used is a bad quality and its just making things worse.

Sorry for the morning rant. I just want someone to explain what might be going on here. Thank you,

P.S: A couple of things about the shops here. No concept of torque wrench. No concept of clutch alignment tool (he was surprised when I told him about it while he was aligning the clutch by hand). No concept of engine variants and engine swaps.