Senario:
I was about 0.2 miles from home. I did a hard acceleration from dead stop. Boost approximately 15psi. I have done this many times without incident. Push in clutch to shift into 2nd . Try to shift into 2nd and can’t. Locked out. No grinding noise. Just shifter will not engage 2nd. Try 3rd and 4th and same lock out. Try 5th and shifter engages. Great I have at least one gear to get home, but 5th does do me much good since I’m only at about 10-15 mph. Afraid of trying any lower gears for fear of losing the one gear I have. So I try to gain some speed by feathering the clutch and gas in 5th. Feather duration definitely less than a minute. Now moving at about 30 mph, I try 3rd and it engages. I try 2nd and it engages. Need to climb hill to get to house, so I shift into 1st – no problem.
I try all gears in driveway and all engage fine including reverse. Pull into garage and smell of burning clutch disk is very strong. Clutch and Flywheel need replaced for sure. Burning out the clutch with that little feathering implies to me that it is most likely the original with 148,000+ miles. Also, I have 500+ pages of maintenance and repair documents going back decades and in none of them is the clutch ever mentioned.
Anyway, next day I try to see how much damage by test driving on my access road. All gears engage fine including reverse, but clutch chatters severely on takeoff and slips substantially in 1st and 2nd gear.
My question is: Does anyone have any idea what happened to lock me out of 2nd gear at the beginning of this disaster? It was as if I hadn’t push in the clutch, but I did. I would say Master or Slave cylinder failure, but neither shows any signs of leakage and seems to work fine now.
Note: I have recently change transaxle oil using Amsoil 75W90 (MTGPK-EA) Synthetic. Amsoil claims it is specifically designed for the E153 transaxle. Drained 3.5 quarts out and replaced with EXACTLY 3.5 quarts Amsoil. With vehicle level, oil started coming out of fill hole at 3.0 quarts. Closed fill hole and added 0.5 quarts for good measure. This was 8 weeks ago and up to this point shifting was a dream. Way smoother and precise than original oil. I have no idea if this has anything to do with this incident or not. Seems way too coincidental to me. Just thought I would mention it.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Please keep your criticism to yourself.
Regards,
