If you smell burning odors coming from your vehicle’s clutch pedal, the clutch is slipping and needs to be replaced. Journey Auto Repair can rebuild or replace the clutch depending on the internal damage. No clutch is going to last forever. In fact, you’re lucky if you get over 100,000 miles out of the factory clutch. Aside from burning odors, here are other signs that the clutch is going bad.
A Higher Clutch Catch Point
The point at which the clutch catches can start to change as the clutch goes bad. Usually, this point gets higher. If you’ve noticed that the catch point on your clutch is higher than normal, it’s time for an adjustment at a minimum. In fact, did you know that you should have the clutch adjusted every 6,000 miles to get the most life out of it?
Changes in the Pedal Resistance
How the clutch feels underneath your foot will also change when the clutch is going out. In most cases, the clutch will stop resisting your foot. In other words, it will feel spongy and soft. It may also sink to the floorboard without locking into the catch point.
Difficulties Shifting the Gears
Naturally, these problems will make shifting the gears in the manual transmission difficult if not impossible. You may find it impossible to get your vehicle to go into gear, or it may slip out of gear and into neutral. You may also have problems shifting through the gear cycle if the clutch is not transferring the power to the transmission as it should be.
Grinding or Other Strange Noises
If the power is still with the engine, the gears will grind when you shift them. This is something that is easy to do when you are learning to drive a manual transmission; it is not something that should happen frequently. If your gears are grinding all the time, the clutch is not staying engaged when you press down on it. It may also squeak when you use it.
Hesitating Acceleration
One final sign that the clutch is no longer able to transfer the engine’s power to the transmission is hesitating acceleration. If your vehicle hesitates when you release the clutch to pick up speed, there is an issue with the power transfer to the transmission.
Call Journey Auto Repair in New Hope, MN, today if your vehicle is having any of the clutch problems described above. We will inspect the clutch and recommend the best option to fix it.