Hey guys, feels like the car's taking a hissy fit on me... Its been trouble free (ish) for a while now its punishing me with a few things at once! Over the course of today the clutch has started to deteriorate or so it seems (i'm not very knowledgeable in this area at all)... This together with a stupid whistle going on somewhere is enough to drive you up the wall.

Syptoms have developed quickly, seemed fine this morning (3 mile journey to work!) but this afternoon I noticed 'feeling' things through the clutch pedal when I had my foot on it... Like vibrations and things spinning. You can now also hear something spinning as I depress the clutch... And it doesn't seem to go down in a smooth movement when you press it slow. When my foot is off the pedal the only sound is the Dual Mass Flywheel clunking now and again (but more regular than usual), but as soon as I push the pedal down even a bit you can hear something... at one point it sounded like ball bearings rattling around. On the positive side there are no symptoms while driving, gears seem to go in fine and stay in, even with rapid acceleration.

I'm concerned as it has come on so fast and I don't want to be stranded when it goes, I've been there before on a previous car. For quite a while I noticed a low squeal when keeping the pedal depressed (like in the drive thru when the noise bounces off the wall), which sounded like a bird in the engine... It's now changed to a more metallic spinning sound.

So the question is - is my clutch or part of it on its way out?

The car has 154k on the clock so its reasonable timing I suppose...

Next question is - What's best, buying a kit and doing it myself, or taking it to a clutch specialist? The reason I ask is that I don't trust anybody else messing with my car but I can see this is a bitch of a job.

I also assume other parts will need replacing with it (i'e nuts/bolts, flywheel?, guibo?, etc) which just won't get done at a shop... whereas I would do everything to a T (taking me ten/a hundred times longer however).

Give me your opinions, I'm fairly confident with fixing the car now and I've done a lot of repairs/maintenance but this is in a new league and I'm working off the floor which isn't ideal.

Thanks guys...