Last night I noticed my car seemed car to start. I thought the battery was getting low.

This morning the problem grew much worse and the engine would die when clutching in and coming to a stop. It is hard to restart.

I figured out that my car idles just fine and normal when I have the transmission shifted in neutral and the clutch pedal out. As soon I even start to press the clutch pedal it seems like it is loading the engine and causes the rpm's to drop. As I continue to press the clutch in, its gets worse until the engine dies.

Getting into gear is a little harder at times. I did a test for clutch drag where I put it in 1st gear on a flat surface and revved to 4,000 rpm to see if the car would move forward, but it did not.

I have an exedy twin HD clutch in it with 30k miles on clutch. I have 55k miles on the car. I have the 5 speed with ACD.

I haven't heard any strange noises.

Please help me diagnose this. I called exedy and 2 local shops to no avail.

Thank you

 

Sounds like your about to chew through your thrust washer.. random and common problem on evos. i would pull the pan and check for metal flakes.. better yet drain the oil and check for metallic particles..

 

I thought Evo don't crank-walk any more. :\

 

Wow, crank-walk sounds terrible, never knew about it. My symptoms are definitely in line with this... I just had my wife push in the clutch pedal while I watched the crank pulley and I was not able to see any movement. Is the engine supposed to be running for this test?

 

its around.. i have seen it happen myself a few times.. because the clutch always pulls you wont see anything unless you pry the crank pulley the opposite direction and then pull the clutch and see the excessive crank movement..

 

OK I just tried prying the crank pulley forward and then had my wife push the clutch. Much to my dismay, the crank pulley moved a distance that I would classify as excessive but I do not have a dial indicator hooked up to it... should I not be able to see it move at all if it was good?

What is the next step? Remove oil pan to inspect? What are the best and worst case scenarios for this? Just replace thrust bearings? Can this be done with engine left in car? If its bad enough I may need to replace the crank and block as well?

 

I looked in my service manual and it states that the crankshaft end play should be:
standard value = .0020 to .0098 in.
limit = .016 in.

I am pretty sure I saw more than .016 in. of movement...

Time to pull off the oil pan and pray that I only have to replace the thrust bearings.

 

yeah somehow there is no known cause to how this exactly happens.. worst case its when someone just sits at a red light holding the clutch down the entire time.. and dry starts dont help either.. i disable the clutch switch in all my cars, so when i go to start i dont have to press the clutch in, since the motor has been sitting for that split few seconds there is no lubrication.. usually once the problem happens im sure its pretty quick that no one catches it enough to save it. I even have a 2.0 block on my shelf that has 200 miles from a fresh build and it crank walked on the dyno.. everything was pulled right away and it still ate the thrust completely and started chewing away at the mains.. sooo you might already be at that stage..
last time i saw it happen exactly how you explain, next day i dropped the pan in the customers car and the block was done, dropped the whole motor and started on a new build.

so yeah stop driving asap and drain the oil.. and see how that looks.. you will see enough shavings to know somethings up..

 

If there are shavings in the pan you would want to replace the oil cooler also.
Keep us posted if you could. Sorry man.

 

I got the oil pan off tonight and the thrust washers are nowhere to be found and the crank has worn into the mains. So obviously my crank is trash, is the block trash as well?

Thank you chamelieon for all for the help with diagnosing this.
I had no idea what this was. I thought it was a clutch problem.

I am thinking of going with a buschur racing 2.3L short block....Your thoughts?

 

sorry OP, it's just crazy with only 55K miles.

 

At a minimum, new crank and bearings.

 

original stock block? anything usual with the history of the motor?

 

Yes, original stock block as far as I know. I am second owner and bought it with 21k miles on it, I have 55k on it now. The original owner never mentioned anything about the block.

 

Here is a pic of the shavings in the oil pan. I saw some in the oil pickup screen too. There was very fine metal powder in oil that i drained out of the oil filter too.