a great day at sears point was ended yesterday by a sudden transmission failure. coming through the esses i noted a bit of vibration and noise. easy downshifts to 3rd and 2nd for the hairpin, then on the throttle out of 11.... lots of vibration and noise. was able to pull off the course up around turn 1. couldn't get into neutral, and trying to move the car in 1st would bog the motor down, but not move the car. after shutting down the motor, i was able to go to neutral ( i think, since i was able to push the car without depressing the clutch).

there was absolutely no indication prior to this lap that there was any problem....didn't miss a shift all day....perfectly smooth....normal clutch and shifter feel.

bummer.....

anyhow, tranny has to come out i suspect. anyone have any experience with this sort of occurence?

tia
fabian

 

Well Foko,

There is no way to know for sure until you take the transmission out, but one possibility is a clutch disc failure. You don't see it too often, but if the clutch lining material may have seperated, it could have caused the vibration. Opening the access plate on the bottom of the tranny might shed come light on the subject.

Pauly D

 

leaked all of its fluid out?

mike

 

no fluids or parts lost.

 

i remember a thread where a guys fd had a pin fall out and was locked into gear. i believe it was in the general tech area. opened up the tranny, put a pin in, and all was well. hope its that easy for you. good luck.

 

Damn, that sucks fabian.. :\

Good luck getting it back together.

PaulC

 

swap in someone else's spare and see if that the problem, if it is, take apart the bad tranny. its pretty interesting inside those!

 

check the clutch disc and pressure plate before opening transmission. disc material probably seperated from the disc and is not allowing clutch to release making shifts difficult. can also drain fluid and look for pieces of metal. I would remove the starter and the access plate and look at the clutch or better yet trans will have to come out so start there. third gen trans is pretty tough and if not abused will work fine. if it is inside the trans a rebuild can get expensive.

 

no i meant if you decide to replace it, rip apart the old one just for a learning experience. lol

 

Sounds like a clutch disc to me. No loud pop noise usually indicates that it didn't explode ... so, yeah, what everyone else has been saying sounds right. The disc material has separated. And, hey ... now that you're in there, time for an upgraded pressure plate.

 

Check the following:

Clutch slave and master cylinders. Probably not, but easy to check.

Clutch disc material. This is the most likely failure.

Other clutch parts (bearings, linkages, etc).

 

I have broken the transmission from the 2nd to 3rd shift on a full throttle 18psi pull.

 

If you are in steady speed or any amount of acceleration, you should be able to pull the shifter lever out of 3rd.

Also you can try to start the car up in 1st gear, the car will start to move foward.

You can try looking in the clutch inspection window to find out if the clutch material is in good shape.

 

Could be bearing failure due to heat

 

well, we opened the tranny and found some serious damage. the third gear primary and secondary shaft gears had about a quarter of the their teeth sheared off.

strange failure, and expensive to fix. there is now a new (used) tranny in place and ready to go.

i've got pics, but i can't seem to upload them. been trying for a couple days despite the file size being quite small. hmmm......is there a server problem going on??

i'll keep trying the pics.

fabian