Something is wrong with my car’s tranny. It is a ’95 Saturn with a 1.9 liter engine and a 5 speed manual transmission. I suspect one of my family members may have driven it and seeing as I am the only one who knows how to drive stick may have ruined it also. But that’s material for another thread.
What happens is the car will not shift into gear with out a considerable amount of force. I don’t feel anything different from the clutch but trying to get it into gear requires the services of the circus strongman. Also, I propped the car up in the front to check out if anything was amiss underneath. While the car was up I once again threw it into gear and the engine started accelerating. The front wheels, being off the ground, started turning.
I don’t know much about cars but I think my clutch may be burned out. Can someone who knows about this stuff let me know? Thanks.
Dunno for certain what might be wrong, but I rather doubt it is the clutch. The clutch is merely the two plates that mate/de-mate when operating the pedal. They’re not conntected in any way to the shift level. Sounds to me more like there’s something wrong with the shifter linkage, which should be adjustable.
Also, your gear selector lever operates via a cable, or pair of cables. If you’re having difficulty moving the shift lever into position, I wouldn’t force it too strenuously. It is entirely possible that you could snap the cable, necessitating further repairs.
Sounds to me like the clutch is bad, I’ve encountered the same thing with a GM vehicle with transaxle before. It is possible that the clutch is just out of adjustment, but doubtful, since the clutch is likely hydraulic.
The clutch is not disengaging completely, so the transaxle gears are trying to engage a moving target. You’re not getting grinding because of the way transaxles work.
Get thee to a clutch shop while it’s still drivable! BTW, if you’re good with a stick, you can ignore the clutch for all upshifting, and thus only use the clutch when starting from a dead stop. Just modulate the accelerator pedal when it’s time to shift – releasing the loads on the transmission allows surprisingly smooth and fast clutchless shifting.
That’s how I drive mine. Good thing I learned too, my clutch is starting to not grab so good anymore and I’m out of money. Gonna try & nurse it along for a couple more months.
It does sound like maybe the slave cylinder is pooping out and not disengaging the clutch. However I once had a bent fork in my tranny that caused difficult shifting & eventually a jammed gearbox. So my guess is the problem will be very inexpensive to fix, or very NOT inexpansive. Hope that helps
The following group of symptoms indicate a clutch not releasing fully:
Difficult to shift into forward gears with the engine running and the vehicle sitting still.
Grinding when attempting to shift into reverse under the above conditions.
With the engine not running, the shift lever moves normally into the gear positions.
When in gear with the engine running and the clutch pedal depressed, will creep on level ground.
Your description indicates the 1st & 4th conditions above are present, and at this point it sounds like a clutch not releasing is the problem. Assuming that’s so, there are two possible causes: failure in the clutch hydraulic cylinders assembly, and failure in the clutch mechanism.
Check the clutch fluid level. If it is significantly low, you can probably restore operation temporarily by topping it up and working the pedal a number of times. If that’s the case, replacement of the clutch cylinders is called for.
If the fluid is not low, it could still be either the clutch hydraulics or the clutch mechanism. I would suggest have a repair facility inspect it. The test procedures can be tricky to describe and tricky to perform.