burnt clutch?

[iseeu2]

I just got my 90' celica about three weeks ago, it's got 183,000 miles on it already. It's also my first time driving clutch, so of course for the first week and a little more I was pealing off or the poor car was bucking an stuff a lot more than it should be lol. Now I'm finally getting good at driving it and my shifts are pretty smooth, lots of the time you don't even feel it. But I had one rought start today, or I think I did. Either way, I started into 1st and my car shook a little and went "KUNKUNKUNKUNK". I took my foot off the gas and put it back on and it took off fine. But as I was driving the car didn't feel the same at all. It feels a heck of a lot looser when I shift, and even the actual stick feels looser when I move it to shift, it's just alltogether too easy to shift, and it doesn't seem to pull hardly at all when I shift up either. I think I blew out the clutch, but I was wondering if anybody could tell me if this is what it feels like, or if not, what a burnt clutch feels like? I figured it wasn't safe at all to drive with a burnt clutch, so I came home just in case. I would really appriciate any help!!

[ST185]

Burnt clutch is caused by releasing the clutch pedal at very high engine rpm.
It will smell pretty bad. But it will go away after the clutch cool down.

Clutch slipping is another story. It is caused by worn out friction plate.
It's a sign telling you that you need a new unit.
In gear, rpm will shoot up but the car won't move.

The symptom you describe is neither burnt clutch nor clutch slipping.
It sounds like something wrong with the transmission.

[iseeu2]

augh I hope it isn't anything to do with the transmission from what I've heard that's a pretty expensive thing to repair and I'm completely broke right now...

Someone looked at it for me today and drove it around. When he came back he said that he didn't think the clutch was blown, but he said that it feels like it might need to be adjusted since it feels pretty loose. It feels to me like it's not catching real well. I think I might have shaken something loose or out of place because when I took the car out later today I made it buck a little again by accident and it started driving like it used to =/... So maybe I jolted something out of place? When it went all loose, it felt like the clutch pedal was way to easy to push down and i never had to be careful when I shifted gears cause almost no matter what i did it just went right into it with no bucking or squealing...Something's got to be wrong cause I'm still not that good with shifting lol so I know that can't be right that I'm shifting perfect all the time..

I don't know anything about the transmission though...All I know is the clutch puts together and pulls apart the transmission and the engine (right? lol)...

[SR5_4WD]

^basically yes it just uses the engine's rotation to turn the tranny. Your best bet is to baby it and drive it as least as possible, until you can get some major cash to solve the issue, because labour can cost 3 times what parts do.

[PuffNStuff]

I drive a 1991 celica GTS
OK, SAME thing happendto me, SAME EXACT THING...... My clutch was so burnt out, that it did not have the friction padding on it, it was just metal. The nuknuknuknuknuk u hear is that, but it also maybe be the axel shafts. Now this all happend last week to me so, the repair should cost you about $800 but that all should fix it because they replaced my clutch and axel shafts and balanced my flywheel. FIXED

[bashattitude]

Just a thought but is there difference in sounds and feel under a hard acceleration or letting off the throttle suddenly? Any out of the ordinary vibration? It is a longshot but through all of this "bucking" maybe you could have tore up an engine/transmission mount? As far as slipping... most times in 1st and 2nd it is hard to get a easy and noticable slip now 3rd and up it will be quite obvious... once you reach 3rd accelerate hard and watch your RPM's. If they go up quickly and the speedometer isn't advancing like you think it should then the chances are it is the clutch. By reading your second post you stated that you ended up "bucking" once you tried driving it again? You wouldn't get that if the clutch was really bad off. Now the shifter feel... A clutch isn't going to effect that BUT a messed up shifting fork or forks would tend to give you a sloppy feel in gear selection. Now about the klunkklunkklunk noise... it sound similar to what you hear in the movies as a car dies from overheating? That kind of noise is more like an ignition ping. Between your foot on the throttle and the engines RPM's the engine is trying to recover from your beginners clutch release. I also noticed you stated that the pedal didn't feel the same and with your release skills still needing some fine tuning it is understandable that it doesn't feel the same. You used up some of the clutch. A partially good clutch will still have a bit of pedal freeplay before you run into a slight bit of resistance if you don't notice that you can expect to be replacing your clutch soon. One more thing you can do is under a mild acceleration slowly push in the clutch and see how far you can push it in before it begins to slip... if you don't get but an inch or two you have a worn clutch. Now after all this and you have found that it isn't slipping you can start looking at the dreaded transmission possibilities... Personally I wouldn't waste the money on having it rebuilt when you can find a good JDM transmission at reasonable prices.

Best of luck.

[jade86]

I've heard of guy who drove somekind of chipper-truck. With a burntup clutch, uphill the truck stopped, so he got under it to jery-rig it I guess(didnt hear details) I think the device he used to chalk the wheels failed, rolled over him and killed him. I'm thirteen, and thinking if that was my father kills me. Guy had kids, but i thought i heard they were grown up. So listen, if something happens and your on the road, pull over as far as you can and stay in the machine, even if its a flat. Sure it may sound dumb, but it could save your life.