So my little sister has been driving my EG coupe. She calls yesterday and says the car won't go into gear. It's a stick, and I know the throwout bearing was on it's way out for the last couple of months. The clincher is that the car is 5 hours away. I've done a clutch and throwout bearing on this same car a few years ago, so I know I'm in for a big pain in the ***. Just gotta rant a little bit, if I had been driving the car I wouldn't mind but now I gotta turn the wrenches on a car I'm not even driving. FML

 

It's more likely to be a hydraulic problem than a TOB problem.

 

This is why noone drives my car.

 

The minute I loan mine out something goes bad, not even worth lending

 

I had a similar situation, but it turned out to be the retaining clip on one of my shift cables had popped out. I replaced the clip and everything was fine.

 

I would check the hydraulic fluid. Maybe the master clutch or slave cylinder are leaking. Very cheap to replace and easy to do. This happened to mine and I replaced both and it solved the problem...

 

I will check into the hydraulics. Just got back from going to bring the car home to our shop. 5 hour ride there and 5 hour ride back made me a dull boy and even less thrilled at the prospect of the TOB being bad. I am given hope with the way you all are suggesting the clutch master/slave cylinder might be to blame, they are much easier to change than the TOB.

I just found out from talking to her today, it had been acting up and getting worse and eventually just stopped. It would pop out of gear, and not go into gear. This sounds much more like a hydraulic issue now that you guys mention it, getting slowly worse over time. The TOB would seem to go out all at once, whereas the hydraulics would be more likely to fade out over time.

 

OK, I just got done replacing the clutch master and slave cylinder. I bled the system and nothing, the pedal is soft, flat. I tried starting the car, and it was making horrible noises I've never heard from it before. The shifter felt like it was stuck in gear when I tried to move it. Any other advice/tips/pointers/suggestions are greatly appreciated. I'm starting to go back to thinking the TOB/clutch might be bad, but I want to know for sure before I tear into it.

 

Called my mechanic friend yesterday, he thinks the problem is that I didn't bleed the hydraulics well enough. He said the problem is that the master cylinder sits higher up than the slave cylinder does so no matter how much you bleed it the air will stay up by the master cylinder. He suggested I unbolt the slave cylinder and pump it up a few times to push the air back out through the master cylinder. I will try this today, in the meantime I am still hoping for input.

 

Got it. It ended up being the linkage on the master cylinder was out of adjustment.