Clutch failure?

[wreining3]

I was driving my 91 Explorer Sport 5 speed manual, 70 mph cruise control on, I didn't hear any unusual noises. Something seemed unusual so I glanced down and the tach was showing the engine redlined. I immediately pushed in the clutch pedal and the rpms dropped and I coasted to the shoulder. The clutch pedal feels unusual and it doesn't matter which gear I put the car in you can push the car forward or backward like it is in neutral. Previously the clutch hadn't been slipping or showing any signs of failure. It seems unusual for the clutch to fail in this manner to me. Any ideas before I drop the transmission? Anybody else have this happen to them?

 

[Doug]

Sounds like the clutch is slipping. You should be able to feel when the clutch is slipping. I know when I had one go bad it was fine under light throttle but once I got on the gas or tried to go up a hill it would slip.

 

[wreining3]

Okay, to clarify my issue. The vehicle will not move under it's own power at all, in any gear. Doesn't make any noises and doesn't even try to move. I can put the car in gear with the vehicle off and the clutch out and push the car with nothing more than rolling resistance, the same as if I had the car in neutral. My guess is that either the hub broke out of the center of the clutch disk or there is a hard part failure in the trans. The confusing part is that it doesn't make any noise and didn't make any noise when it failed. IMO if the flywheel came loose from the crank then it wouldn't balance correctly and would either run like crap or not at all. the engine runs just like it did before this incident. Anyone else have any ideas? Thanks for the response Doug.

 

[Phager]

It does sound like clutch failure to me. Do you know when the clutch was last replaced? To be honest, signs of clutch failure can be very subtle, have you noticed a reduction in engagement range recently? It's kind of a shame this hadn't happened a month or so ago, as LBCC was looking for a clutch job for the powertrains class, and that's a great way to get a clutch job done for cheap.

 

[wreining3]

Finally got the transmission out and found that the clutch was good. I put the tranny in first and spin it by hand and the mainshaft doesn't turn. So it looks like it's time for a new tranny or to rebuild this one.

 

[Phager]

Does the main shaft spin in any of the other gears? If it does it might just be the 1-2 sychronizer hub has an issue and not allowing it to go into gear. I'm not sure about the case design of the M5OD but if you can crack the case, maybe we can see what's going on in there

Good luck.

Pat

 

[wreining3]

Opened up a nightmare, the input shaft gear basically melted taking the countershaft with it. The other gears appear on first inspection to be ok. I am currently dissasembling the transmission to figure out how many parts I am actually going to need. Oh and further investigation reveals that this is an M5R1 transmission.

 

[briwayjones]

Oh and further investigation reveals that this is an M5R1 transmission.

What's a M5R1 transmission? A Mitsubishi transmission?

 

[Phager]

If it is the mitsu tranny and ATF was put in by mistake, that might explain the catastrophic failure. That's pretty crazy, I've yet to run across a tranny that suffered from a failure as you've described (That's not saying much though, my experience with transmissions is somewhat limited). It might actually be cheaper to pick up a good used tranny and freshen it up if both the main shaft and counter shaft are toast, replacing those two alone would be pretty costly.

Keep us updated

Pat