So, what happened is that my car was fine. The clutch was fine, no noise, no vibrations, nothing. Maybe adjusted a little low, but I like that. Anyway, on Sunday, I went to pick up a friend. As I said, everything was fine. About 2 hours later, we hopped in my car to go to the store, and all of a sudden, I could barely put it into gear. It grinded a little bit putting it into reverse, but otherwise, all the other gears were just extremely difficult to get into gear - no grinding. The next morning, I was going to take it to have it looked at, but I couldn't get it into gear at all.
Now, I've driven manuals a lot. I love them and prefer them. I've had clutches go bad, and I've had a transmission go bad. But it has NEVER happened like this. It has always started to slip first and there were always fair warning signs. I've never had this happen before??!!!??
I'm a broke, broke, BROKE college student who has been without a car for almost a week now, with like next to no money to fix it. I was quoted almost $1000 to replace the clutch (OMG)!! I don't know what to do at this point. The car isn't drivable right now because I can't get it into gear. After a ton of research the past couple of days, I FINALLY figured out that my brake and my clutch fluid come out of the same reservoir. But that reservoir is full. The fluid is dark, which doesn't seem right to me. Perhaps it's dirty?? I don't know....
So, do you have any ideas about what the problem could be? How do you flush the system? How difficult is it to replace the slave and/or master cylinders? From what I've been able to tell, this may in fact be the issue??? I'm not a mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not completely ignorant either. If it's not too terribly difficult, I can probably figure it out with some assistance!! I mean, I do a lot of small maintenance stuff myself. But, replacing a clutch is NOT within my abilities, esp since it requires taking like the entire front end apart! Hence, the ridiculous prices I was quoted.....ARG!!!
Any help/advice from anyone would be GREATLY appreciated!! I love my MX-3! But, I also have to have a car to get around!! And I can't justify spending $800-$1000 to fix it. Oh, and I have a 1992 MX-3 5 spd 4 cylinder 1.6L! Thank you sooooooo much!!!!
