Hey guys, I am not the best at trouble shooting so I was hoping you could all please help me find the problem with my transmission. Lately my clutch has been feeling a tad spongy. Only way I can really describe my clutch I suppose. I find when I throw it into 3rd gear sometimes it grinds before it catches, even when the clutch is fully depressed. And also when I down shift into 3rd it grinds unless I am below like 60km.

Also it feels like when I get 4000rpm + in 3rd it feels like the engine has trouble getting into high speeds, as if the transmission is slipping at high revs or something.

Any ideas?

P.S. I am gonna drain and throw in some new tranny fluid. Any suggestions? I picked up 3 litres of ACDELCO syncromesh, cause I heard good things, picked it up from lordco.

All input appreciated! Thanks!

 

Inspect the master cylinder, slave cylinder and lines for leaks. Does the clutch fully disengage when you press the pedal?

 

flush the clutch fluid system.

 

If it slips at higher rpms your clutch might be getting too worn down. Might need to replace it. That doesnt account for the spongy feeling though.

 

Bleed the air outta the system. And like Stampe suggested, might be time to replace clutch, but if you do that might as well replace needle bearing and the works. Had similar symptoms with my N/A. Good as gold afterwards. Not too hard to do, but will need an extra pair of hands to assist. G'luck

 

I'd first look and see if the slave cylinder is dripping at all (mounted on top of tranny where the clutch soft line goes). If it's not dripping I'd just rebuild the master cylinder (rebuild kits are usually under 15 bucks) and you would end up bleeding the system afterwards. You could see if just bleeding the system out will solve your problem but judging by what you're saying, it's very likely that it's air or a bad master cylinder.

 

One more thing.....don't rule out synchro's in tran might be wearing down.

 

That's possible too but I'd stick to a rebuild for the master cylinder and a bleeding of the fluid before I'd jump to the conclusion it was synchros.

 

if it grinds into a gear just double clutch into that gear and that shows synchro's are bad

 

Double clutch.....in and out of that particualr gear twice over? What about his hesitation to gain speed @ 4k in 3rd.....clutch slipping, no? All I can say is this.....start with the obvious man, cheap stuff first, if that doesn't solve the problem at hand then take it up a notch. Seems like you have three things going on here. 1) Air in the system 2) synchros going bad (can ride it out) 3) clutch slipping due to worn pads or throw-out bearing sticking.

 

Mine started slipping upon hard acceleration in 4th and 5th gears. Turned out to be the clutch slave cylinder. Put a new one on, and it's been perfect for 2 years now. I took the old one apart, but there was nothing obvious in there, but it must have been hanging up and not retruning fully, keeping the clutch only partially engaged. Tha'd expalin hard shifting, too.

 

what if the clutch slips in all gears? I am not a clutch wizard, so pls dont laugh about the ??

What if it slips in all gears at all speeds? Like if it takes you a while to get up to speed from a dead stop? Fluid level was a little low but still in the acceptable range. I topped it off anyways. And once in a while, going into second gear, it grinds a little. If I go easy into second it does not do it, but if I shift normally it sometimes does. AFAIK, master and slave cylinders are original on it--86 GXL with 101K

 

Ttt

 

if your clutch slips in all gears... start searching for a new clutch

 

already have one on order and just waiting for it to come in, but I just wanted to make sure that the rest of the system was not causing this problem.