Clutch Slipping Big Time

[jsinton]

Hi all. I just bought a 1999 Elantra yesterday. I test drove it, it had great power, and clutch seemed fine. I drove it home 90 miles with no problems. Today I drove it to get insurance and registration... again no problems. I was a happy camper. I''m normally a really slow driver, and I pussy foot the clutch PLENTY. I''m used to NEVER needing to replace a clutch disk.

Then it was like somebody flipped the "clutch slip ON" switch. There was no gradual slippage, no hint of a bad clutch. It just started slipping like crazy in all gears. I was barely able to limp home, thank God there was no hills or I wouldn''t have made it.

I inspected what I could see. The fluid resivouir is full with CLEAN fluid like somebody had bled it recently. I don''t see any leaks. There doesn''t appear to be an adjustment of any kind. The master cylinder appears a little too clean, like it got replaced. The pedal seems a little too high to me, that''s why I was looking for an adjustment.

Normally in my old Volvo I would assume the clutch is bad and replace it, but by reading this forum it looks like that may not be my problem.

Any help much appreciated... thanks in advance.

[dmiller66]

You might want to check for an oil leak. If the rear main seal leaks onto the clutch, that can cause it to slip.

[jsinton]

Yeah, I thought of that, but there's no leaks from the main seal, also no leaks from the clutch slave or master either. I'm presently dropping the trans, I report when I know something.

[jsinton]

Well, I got the transmission out, and much to my suprise, the clutch was fine, no problem.
A fine waste time. At least I got a replacement clutch cheap, $90 w/shipping on eBay for the whole clutch set. I put in the new clutch, and reassembled everything. When I tried to connect the slave plunger to the controller arm, the slave was siezed. So the slave was holding the arm, making the clutch slip. I was able to bleed the system, and clear whatever was holding it. Now I have a new clutch, and it works good. Too bad I had to drop the trans to figure it out.