here's what happened, tropical storm Bill came by and dumped hella rain through our town and i happened to be driving on the road when all the rain was pouring down. I ran through a few large puddles on the way home and never thought anything of it. I get home, park for a few hours for the rain to subside and then i get back in my car to drive. When I startup and depress the clutch to get into gear, i can't. it seems like the clutch isn;t disengaging. I bled the clutch fluid, and noticed that the slave cylinder was fully operational and was pushing the fork. do you guys have any ideas on what the problem could be? could the water damage my clutch and/or throwout bearing? I really don't want to take off the transmission just to find out what's going on. Something else. when the engine is off, I'm able to go through all the gears without any problem, so i dont think the transmission is bad. well, sorry for the long post, but i wanted to give details. any help or advice would be thanked.

 

Try starting the car in gear (clutch depressed). If the car starts moving forward then the clutch is not disengaging all the way.

 

your clutch disk is done...the same thing happened to me on sunday night... I found out my clutch disk was shredded really bad

 

ive tried starting the car with the transmission in gear and it moves forward. I really hope that it's not the disk. i've already taken the transmission off and visually inspected everything. one of my friends told me that it could have been the throwout bearing so i replaced it with a new one and put everything back together,but i still need to get a vacuum pump to bleed the clutch fluid.

 

Could the disc have rusted to the flywheel or pressure plate? I've seen it happen to cars that have sat for a number of months. Put the front of the car on jackstands, start it in gear, then with the clutch pressed down apply the brakes. That MIGHT be enough to break it loose.

Are you sure the release arm is on the ball stud properly? If it came off or if the arm is not properly attached to the throwout bearing, the slave cylinder would move but not release the pressure plate.

 

the car sat in one place for no longer than 4 hours. I'll try out the lifting of the front on jackstands thing and see if that will work. when i took off the transmission, i noticed that everything was still in place. could enough water in the transmission cause the transmission to not go into any of the gears?

 

My thought was that the trans might have been underwater. That could cause really fast rust on the clutch and flywheel. I saw a clutch get locked up by a small rock getting into the pressure plate once, maybe something washed in?

The transmission should be OK since it goes into gear with the motor off. It won't go in with it running due to the clutch not releasing. Something is keeping it locked up. Did you drain and refil the transmission? It could have water mixed with the oil. Not likely to have caused the problem you are having now, but could cause later transmission failure.

 

its one of 2 things
1) the fork isnt moving all the way to dis engage the clutch.
2) the clutch is toast. (more likley)