I recently replaced my '04 R53 clutch and everything had been fine until today.
Normal driving and I'm pulling away in first gear a little bit hard and I get a not too loud or violent pop and I have no power at the wheels.
Clutch pedal feels fine but I can shift into any gear with the engine running and not stepping on the clutch. I have constant neutral.
I used a stock Luk clutch so a failure there would surprise me.
Any ideas? broken flywheel or input shaft on the tranny.
I am not looking forward to pulling the tranny again but know I have to.
Has anybody experienced anything similar?

 

Are both of the drive shafts intact? With one broken your MINI will not move. Good luck....

 

^ I agree, check your driveshafts.


Nik

 

I'll check them first. I'm hoping that is it because I really don't want to pull the transmission again.
Thanks, going to check them in the morning.

 

Any news?

 

I pulled the easy one and it appears to be in good shape. Taking a break and will get to the right side soon.

 

I pulled the right side drive axle and saw exactly what I didn't want to see - an axle in good condition. There is no slop and turning one end results in the other end turning smoothly. The splines are all in good shape.
Now I'm thinking it is probably the flywheel. Has anyone heard of one failing in this fashion? It went from running fine to no power at the wheels in two seconds.

 

take a look at your shift cables. maybe the pop you hear was the tranny coming out gear and the cables popping off. what does the shifter feel like?

 

G.D.: It feels fine. Right now I can move the shift lever into any gear position without stepping on the clutch and with the engine running. That may indicate what you are talking about. Next thing I'll check is the shifter cables. Anything to not have to remove the transmission again.

If It is in the tranny, I'm thinking the part that serves as the differential. I did read about a similar problem in this forum. That would be about as bad as it gets.
I'm thinking German engineering is not as great as you may have heard.

 

What was the reason you swapped out the clutch in the first place?

 

...and when you say recently swapped it out, how recently?

 

I changed it about a month ago. I have 82K miles on the car. I'm the second owner and I think that was the original clutch. It was starting to slip when I got on the gas hard in 2nd or 3rd. Everything was fine after I replaced it. It probably had about 500 miles on it since it was replaced.

 

Do you have reverse gear still ?

Maybe try removing your air box and check the Bowden cable bracket under it....see if one of the shift cables popped out of it's bracket. #4 below. They can be a PITA sometimes.

 

I have no reverse gear either. I'll check the cables next. I was confident that they went back in correctly but you never know.

Thanks for the input

 

Cables appear to be intact and the shifter working properly. I'm really trying to avoid dropping the transmission again but I think I've eliminated all other possibilities.
How could something so major fail so instantly?

 

Did you replace the pressure plate? Could have been the pressure plate straps snapping so the pressure plate has nothing pulling it back into the "clamping" position. Sounds like you've checked all the external suspects so the next step is to pull the trans

 

The chance that all pressure plate straps (also called 'fingers') would snap at the same time is pretty nil, in my opinion.

 

I replaced the pressure plate, disc and T/O bearing with new Luk equipment so a failure there would surprise me. After it blew there was no noise from the transmission/clutch area even with the engine running and it appeared to go into all gears without problems. The issue is no power coming out of the transmission.
I believe the issue is in the differential portion of the tranny but it is hard to get info on the inner workings.
I don't have a lot of enthusiasm for this car anymore but it's my daily driver so it must be fixed. I don't think I will own it too much longer though.

 

The pressure plate straps are not the same thing as the fingers you see in the middle of the pressure plate. They go around the edge of the pressure plate.

http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticl...et-a-Grip.aspx

Did you replace the "arm" the throwout bearing goes into? I know Way has mentioned that he has seem those crack and fail.

You could try draining the trans fluid to see if any metal comes out. I'd be very surprised to find the differential or something inside the transmission let go.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using NAMotoring

 

I don't think the throwout bearing arm is the problem. If it were, I could put the car in gear without the engine running, try to start it and it would resist because the starter is trying to drive the wheels.
The problem is there is no transmission of power through the tranny to the wheels.
I am putting off removing the transmission again until I am 100% absolutely sure it needs to come out. I don't want to have to do it period but It would seriously suck to pull it and find out I didn't need to.
Thanks for the input and keep it coming if there is something that hasn't been covered.

 

Being able to "shift" the tranny without depressing the clutch while the engine is running is not a good sign.

When a clutch normally goes there will be noise associated with the failure while the engine is running. Clanking, knocking, squealing, etc. caused by loose or broken parts being flung around in the clutch housing, you get the picture. A loose shifting cable (aka linkage) as mention previously, could cause the problem, the tranny permanently suck in neutral. Another similar issue would be the tranny shifting forks that linkage is attached to, these are internal to the tranny. If for some reason they become disengage or damaged then you would be stuck the gear you are in, unable to shift in or out to another gear. The final probable cause I can think of is a broken tranny input shaft. It is the tranny primary input shaft that is connected to the clutch. When that goes nothing (torque) is transferred to the tranny and it seem like it is in neutral. When I was younger we blew (snapped it in two) the tranny input shaft at the strip and the car seemed like it was stuck in neutral as you describe. Drivetrain problems are a "*****" cause it always ends up pulling the tranny and then more.

I wish you luck with problem.

 

I'm thinking out of the box here. Check the clutch slave cylinder if it moves when you depress the clutch. If the slave cylinder somehow got stuck while the clutch was fully depressed the clutch may be is constant disengage. It sort of fits. I've never seen this before but stranger things have happen. Like I said I was thinking out of the box.

 

I'm not exactly a transmission guru here but here is a picture of the internals of the transmission when I did a Quaife install. Sorry for the crappy picture. It was all I had.

From what I understand the reverse gear is only engaged/moved when reverse gear is. What happens is the part labeled the selector shaft moves up/down which correlates to left right movement on the gear shift. Then the selector shaft rotates which correlates to up/down right movement on the shift lever inside the car. I'd be surprised to see an internal trans failure. It's definitely complicated (I don't fully understand how it all works) but it's not a super complicated trans with lots of points of failure and little wimpy shift forks. Everything is pretty beefy and the loads where the selector levers meet the selector shaft wouldn't be that great in normal operation. Just not sure what the problem could be. My bet would still be on clutch/TOB components though.

Oh and sorry for the large pic. I wanted to keep it big so things were easier to see.

 

v10climber that photograph is great. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

Charlie

 

Thanks for the continued input. I will check to see that the slave cylinder is not stuck later today.
My first thought was a clean break on the input shaft. All of the symptoms support that. Also possible is a failure of the dual mass flywheel but Im still not sure that would lead to complete loss of transfer of power. Any thoughts on that? Would a separation of the parts of the flywheel lead to my current condition?

v10: Thanks for the photo. It actually looks simpler than I imagined and may come in handy later