On last weeks show you had a caller who’s pressure plate had rusted to the flywheel, rendering her clutch inoperable. Some peope had suggested hitting a tree or some other immovable object. Having encountered the problem before, I know a much more sensible way to solve the problem. What you do is you use the tire jack to lift the drive wheels off the ground. You then put the transmission in third gear and start the engine. The wheels will begin to spin immediately. You then hit the accelerator until the speedometer says you are doing 50 mph at which point you push in the clutch pedal and slam on the brakes. The drive wheels will come to a halt while the engine is still cranking along and the weak point, hopefully the rust that is holding the pressure plate to the fly wheel, will break. The care will work fine after that.
The tree method eliminates the risk of the car falling off the jack / stands…The pressure plate is not the problem…It’s the splines on the disk that are rusted to the transmission shaft, keeping the disk tight against the spinning flywheel…Quite common on vehicles that have been partially submerged, especially in salt water…The clutch disk must be able to move on it’s shaft in order to disengage from the flywheel…