Re: Clutch Slipping.

["Dave Swingle" <dswingle@xxxx>]

This is probably Not Good. 

There is no way to inspect the clutch from outside. There are a 
couple of holes that you can look into and see the backside of the 
pressure plate, but unless there is massive amounts of fluid in there 
you won't tell much. 

I've never heard of anyone being able to "clean up" an oily clutch 
disc, even off the car but especially on the car. There is not much 
room in there when it's put together, anything you "spray" in there 
will just gook everything up and pretty much stay there. A degreaser 
would tend to wash the lube from the throwout bearing slider and the 
fork pivot, and then you'd have other problems. 

Normally when the slave cylinder leaks it runs around the bellhousing 
onto the frame and then the floor, but I suppose that it could get on 
the clutch in an extreme case, especially if the dust shield is 
missing. At any rate, there is no way to clean up the clutch without 
taking it apart, and judging by your symptoms something catastrophic 
(massive leak or the clutch disk just failed) has happened. The only 
alternative would be if you happened to run through deep water and 
get it all wet, but I presume that you would have mentioned that in 
your post.

Might be a good time to learn how to pull the transaxle - not a lot 
of fun but I have done mine on jackstands on the garage. This job is 
a LOT of labor, the thing weighs a ton. The parts themselves are not 
too bad. 

I wrote it up at 

http://www.dmcnews.com/Techsection/manualtrans.htm

Dave Swingle


--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxx, "Robert Rooney" <DMCVegas@xxxx> wrote:
.....Right now my car is driveable, but I 
> can't accellerate fast. If I push the gas pedal too fast the clutch 
> slips and the RPM's just shoot up. When I had the old clutch 
> replaced, it took over a week to get this bad, when this happened 
> last night, there was no warning at all. However When I checked the 
> fluid level in the clutch it was below half full. I filled it back 
> up, but no change for the clutch. Looking down from above, the 
slave 
> cylinder appears to have a small leak. But I haven't noticed any 
> stains on my garge floor from it. If this is a case of DOT4 or some 
> other type of fluid/oil on the clutch plate & fly wheel: 1. How Can 
I 
> inspect everything. 2. Is there any type of degreaser or detergent 
> that I could safely spray up to clean the clutch?