Looking for some help here. 2014 Hyundai Elantra GT 6MT. The car is my DD and has been great up until yesterday. Was driving home on the highway, went to downshift to get around a slower car, and my clutch wouldn’t disengage. Still had pressure on the pedal, but I wasn’t able to shift gears without “speed shifting” and forcing it into gear. Got a tow home and checked for any leaks. Nothing. I could start the car in gear and immediately begin moving forward, but anytime I tried to disengage the clutch with the pedal it wouldn’t do it. Then, this morning as I was pulling it into my shop, everything was fine. Car shifted fine, could start in gear with clutch disengaged and stay stationary (something I couldn’t do yesterday) and was able to drive around. I took it for a spin to try and replicate what happened yesterday, and after 30-45 minutes of driving everything was still working just fine. At no point yesterday or today did it pop any codes or lights on the dash. I can now drive like nothing happened, but it still worries me because I don’t want it to happen again. Any ideas of what I should be looking for or has anyone else had this happen?
I’ve seen this happen on a couple of vehicles.
What happens is one of the damper springs on the clutch disc breaks and gets wedged between the clutch disc and the flywheel.
The flywheel spins faster than the clutch disc and wears down the spring until it falls to the bottom of the bell housing. then clutch works fine.
But until that happens, you can’t shift gears.
Tester
Thanks for the input, ill have to check it out. What kind of damage does that cause? Is it something that needs to be addressed immediately?
If this is what has happened, you’ll be replacing the clutch assembly shortly.
Tester
Your symptoms indicates there’s likely a serious problem with something in the clutch ass’y and the transmission is going to have to come out for a look-see. Before doing that check to make sure nothing is obstructing the movement of the clutch pedal itself, or any visible linkage from the clutch slave cylinder towards the clutch release bearing. On some cars there’s nothing to see there besides a tube b/c the clutch release bearing is inside the bell-housing & hydraulically activated. hmmm … what else? … I suppose there could be a problem with the clutch master cylinder that’s locking up, but that seems pretty unlikely given the symptoms. The clutch MC could be removed and bench inspected/tested to prove/disprove that theory.