This is my only car. It’s down at the moment. Driveable, but I’m not driving it like this lol. I can drive my parents car but I don’t want to rack up miles on their car and spend a ton on gas since it’s an SUV. So any help is tremendously appreciated.
Car: 99 civic ex, original y8 motor, transmission, and clutch (all with 219k miles).
Problem:
Started wednesday, driving home from my drum lesson. I left the building and the clutch felt fine, shifted normal. About 1/8 of a mile into my drive home, the clutch started getting stiff. I kept shifting and it got more stiff. At that point I knew something was wrong but I thought I could make it home, but a few seconds later, I couldn’t even shift into gear anymore and the pedal was hard as crap. I pull over and call up a friend and he tells me to look in to the clutch fluid reservoir and sure enough, it’s bone dry. He comes out with fluid and we bleed the system until its straight fluid. In the mean time, the pedal went back to normal feel, very soft. Not even 10 seconds after finishing the flush, I get in to try to go and the pedal is back to stiff. So I get it towed to my friends house and leave it over night. Next day, he replaces the master cylinder. It was definitely leaking. He flushed all the fluid out, put new fluid in, I helped bleed the system until straight fluid came out. Same thing. Stiff pedal (not AS stiff as the day before but still stiff) and the car won’t go into gear. The slave cylinder has not been replaced yet.
Here’s the very weird part: While I’m moving in gear, if I push the clutch in (stiff pedal still), the clutch will disengage and I can rev the engine. If I try to pull the shifter out of gear with the clutch in, it doesn’t come out easily and it won’t let me shift into the next gear. I have to rev match and shift without the clutch. It seems like it’s disengaging JUST enough to free the transmission from the engine to let me rev. I drove home clutchless with zero problems. The transmission still works perfectly.
I did some reading and have narrowed it down to either the slave cylinder or throw out bearing. I don’t know much about cars except how to do the basic oil changes, brake rotor/pad replacement, etc. so it’s all gibberish to me lol. I know the general parts and sort of how they work together but that’s it. What do you guys think?
try the slave cylinder first, its the easier of the two and the cheaper.
if that doesnt work, you’ll have to split the transmission from the engine to do the throwout bearing. and while you’re in there and its apart, you might as well do the clutch too, and possibly a flywheel depending on how bad that is.
Is it possible it is something else? I just narrowed it down to those 2 based on what I read. But like I said, I don’t know much about this stuff.
I’d love to do a clutch/flywheel job but money is a huge concern. I could sell some stuff to fund it, but I’d rather just fix the least amount and drive the car into the ground lol. I really want to swap it but that’s obviously way more money. But it’s in my book of possible routes I’m willing to take.
I took a picture of the lever while the clutch was out and in and then layered them to show you how much it moved. Didn’t move much… What’s that say? lol
There’s usually a boot over that fork. That’s the only place you can see in. At least AFAIK and from what my friend said yesterday. I could be mistaken.
normally theres a splash guard you can take off that allows you to “inspect” the clutch and flywheel. ive seen it on the part of the bellhousing that sticks out under the block for the flywheel and clutch assembly.
Rochester, east side. And what easy? Replacing the throw out bearing? I can do the slave. I just cant pull the transmission or do transmission work in general.
by the looks of where your fork is sitting, it looks maxed out. So perhaps you have a broken shift fork, and the pedal is stiff because the fork is maxed out and all you’re doing is driving it into the side of the tranny case with the slave piston. Really hard to say without actually taking the 5 mins of seeing it in person to diagnose it. But cracked shift forks are actually rather common on the d trannies.
Shine a flashlight in there and see if your arm/fork is broken. If it’s not broken your problem is most likely a junked slave cylinder. Replace the slave cylinder, and re-bleed the system.
