I was just cruising along in third basically. Pushed the clutch in to slow down, never came out of third, let clutch back out. Heard/felt a pop of some sort in the clutch. After that, the clutch did not disengage completely, and the part that stumped me is that it wasn't like I was tryin to jam the gear in without pushing in the clutch at all under normal circumstances where it would grind like crazy. It didn't grind at all. What it would do is I would feel resistence going into the gear and the vehicle would start to roll into whatever direction that gear was for. I didn't actually force it into gear though.

This happened once before in June, I ended up replacing the clutch and slave cylinder. In that case though, the clutch broke. One of the springs in the disc fell out and was rolling around in there, which as best I can guess, caused the bleeder valve to back out and render the slave useless. So after replacing both, all was well.

In the beginning of July I lost the use of 1st, 2nd, and 4th. I could get into the gears though it would grind like crazy (I assume because the syncros were shot), but I couldn't get back out of those gears without shutting down the car. So I just kept driving the car in 3rd and 5th and started saving for a new trans.

Fast forward to the original problem, the weekend before Thanksgiving. I figured the slave went bad again. I pulled the trans, looked at the clutch, seemed fine, all the fingers on the pressure plate looked fine, replaced the slave cylinder, pedal pressure feels good, but the problem is still there. A friend of mine insisted that it must be the trans cuz it was bad already, and I was just about ready to purchase my new trans anyway, so I went ahead and ordered an RPM Stage V and put that in even though I didn't think it was the problem. Still have the same problem.

So now I have a brand new transmission and slave cylinder, which leaves the problem to two possibilities in my mind, the clutch (Spec 3+) or the master cylinder (Wilwood 1"). Anybody have any clue what the hell is going on?

Talked to the shop that built the trans, they said exactly what I thought they would say. Probably a bad master cylinder or at least something in the hydraulics, but not the clutch itself. Which is somewhat comforting, I really don't want to drop the trans for the 3rd time in 2 weeks.

It's a T56 obviously, mated to an LS1 in an 88 RX7.

 

Its impossible to say without looking at the car . Either way , you're going to have to pull it back a part to find out what broke .

 

I realize it's got to come apart again, was just hoping someone would chime with "it's almost definately a hydraulic problem" so i could rule out the clutch for instance. Or "try this this might help."

Just trying to cover all angles.