Seph_Civic

Hello peoples, I have a 97' civic ex D16y8/y7 mini-me swap and I think my clutch assembly is starting to go bad, or at least hoping it's the clutch. It will occasionally slip slightly when riding steady around 3k rpm then quickly re-engages. Also the car smokes and smells like burning clutch/break in reverse only.The gear shift has a bit of play in the assembly almost as if it would go in gear without engaging the clutch, but it wont. When moving into gear it goes but with some minor difficulty most of the time and the gear shift rattles a lot while driving. Reverse on the other hand makes a louder "whirring" sound when backing up and as I said it smells like breaks and it smokes. Up to about 6 months ago there were no problems, then the engine started getting sluggish and just didn't have the higher rpm power it had. I chalked it up to the higher compression wearing the rings out. Not the case....Now it drives fine if you baby it and keep it under 34-36k rpm, but any higher and it almost feels as it stops and starts running a bit hard and just doesn't go. It has become an utter turd to its prior life and just doesn't want to get up to the higher rpms. 70-80mph has become a real chore to get up to on the highway anymore. It will also shudder sometimes when trying to take off in 1st gear and make a light metal on metal rubbing sound. I really don't think that's coming from the transmission, but could be stemmed from the tranny/clutch issue.

I am wondering if it is the clutch going out, would it destroy my transmission as well (as far as the internals wearing out faster) or if you think it seems to be my transmission just dieing? The only cel code is 63, for my secondary cat (have a blowthru). It idles fine most of the time (damn thing idles high when moisture is present in the air) around 5-700rpm, all the gears work, 10w30 oil changed at yearly intervals. It just feels as something is off with the shift linkage to the transmission and when the gears are under certain rpms.

The Transmission in question was put in almost 4 1/2 years ago along with new clutch, flywheel and wanna say the tob. I then about 7months later rebuilt the engine into a mini-me swap and used the same tranny & clutch. The Build has about 80k on it now and about 100k on the transmission.

Any advice or little tricks on running some more diagnostics would be greatly appreciated. I'm recently laid off and not really in a position to be spending money on unnecessary fixes with the money I do have. I have researched but to no avail found quite a problem like mine. I hope I provided enough information to get a basic understanding of what I am experiencing.

Thanks again.

HAPPY EASTER!!!!http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ies/scared.gif