Went for a drive with about 20 BMWs from bimmerforums.com through the North Georgia Mountains....

about 30 mins into the drive....from about a 10mph roll i floor it....at about 5000 RPM......boom bam knock tick any sound you can think of I hear....

pull over...call tow truck....my car is sitting 100 miles away at some guy's shop that I have never met.

had to call a friend from home to come get me....ended up walking over a mile from where the tow truck driver told my friends to be and where he dropped me off....

i have no car ...not enough savings to cover this i am sure.....

i have no idea whats going to happen to my max.....i am almost positive that i blew the f@#k out of my transmission. i have an ACT clutch....you better believe I won't get one of these clutches again if and when I get my car back on the road.

i am lost without my max....

 

Did you noise happen when you shifted or while the engine was reving ?? Could be an engine problem but not really likely

Did you try to shift it or turn it right off ?? what happened to your gears, still there ??

-matt

 

not while shifting....just while revving in first gear

heres what i know ....nothing....i cant answer questions....

i pulled over almost immediately.....i knew it was something MAJOR.

 

Man I am sorry for your loss, but it is insane to think this problem could have in any way been caused by a clutch. You said yourself it happened while you where reving, therefore the clutch was not even engaged. Would your car still start after this?

 

You didnt play with the shifter at all ??

Did the noise come then your engine spun up to redline ??

-matt

 

i really dont kno.

car wouldnt start but i think thats because i had my headlights on for an hour and a half before the tow truck came....

 

i am really not an expert on this subject but,

clutch engages the gear right? therefore it could rip through gears that were not strong enough to hold its force??

beats me...


THE ONLY thing i do know is that i put my head down to the car and opened the hood while the car was still on and it sounded like it was coming from the trans...

 

did the car shoot right up to red line, like you blew the clutch? was their griding? did the car slow down at all, or coast?

 

Where you even driving the car..you dont know anything ??

-matt

 

I may be unsure about exactly what happened. Only if this happened as a direct result of a hard shift could this be attributed to a clutch.

 

When I blew my transmission, it sounded like someone threw a bunch of rock into a 5 gallon bucket. And I could feel the griding through my shifter. Also I couldn't get into 1-2 gears, 3 gear was gone, and 4 and 5 worked.

 

not the clutchs fault if you didnt shift . it held up

 

When i blew my transmission on my Jeep it sounded exactly like that. Every sound was present, CLUNK Bump DUH....u get the point..

 

thats a perfect description of what i heard.

 

I have the ACT, but I don't blame it. I blame my lame shifting, but 5 spd trannys are cheap.

 

yea i heard the same thing as well...I has ACT as well but I missed third bad

-matt

 

lame shifting???

i wasnt shifting at the time sooooooo.....

how cheap????
should i look into lsd? how much is that?
any RECOs on where i can find anything in GA?

 

Oh I see.... Yeah it would be tight if you could find a LSD tranny, but I doubt it. I paid 450 for my 5 spd with a 3 month warranty.

 

I paid $500 for my 5 speed LSD trans with 63K miles...Def get an LSD...in the rain and around turns is like night and day

-matt

 

i paid 450 for my tranny and all conversion parts w/3 month warrenty as well

 

this has been said a hundred times, but it looks like once again... people with act clutches are loosing their trannies.

 

Nothing to do with ACT clutches

 

a clutch doesnt kill a tranny, people do

 

-matt

 

wouldnt the clutch blow before it did much damage to a tranny?

 

if the clutch grabs then its doing its job, if it slips time to replace it. Your mis-shifts or abuse you want to unload on your tranny/clutch is your own doings. If you slam it in gear and got a good clutch (act) its gonna grab. thats why you bought it right? to grab. what are they 37% more than stock? So thats what you get a great clutch. If you wanted to be able to slam gears or whatever you should have gotten an oem clutch or something not as good as the ACT.

 

BS it has nothing to do with ACT clutches....

I was one of the first guys on the .org to pick up an ACT clutch about 3 years ago...before that I had over 60,000 HARD driven miles on my 5-speed problem free.....after the clutch went in I went through THREE transmissions in the next 40,000 miles....not the clutch my a$$....

I have heard of SO many .org members blowning up their trannies with ACTs over the past 3 years it's just getting sickening.

As for the guys who say it's the driver and not the clutch. Who the hell buys a performance clutch for their car only to baby the hell out of it???

 

sounds like to good of a clutch for POS tranny to me. If it breaks the tranny then its holding up like a ****.

 

i got about 25k miles on mine so far... No probems by the way.

 

the problem is not the holding power of the ACT clutch....it's the HARSH engagement. Too much shock to the tranny.

The ACT clutch uses a modified stock disc that engages quicker than stock.

The perfect set-up would be an ACT pressure plate with an un-modified stock disc.....I would have tried it but I ran out of patience with the maxima's tranny and FWD in general.

 

My only complaint is how the clutch pedal is so much harder/stiffer to press now. I hate that in traffic.

 

that's because of the holding power of the pressure plate, you have to push 37% harder than before.

 

Brian's back, yay(in retard voice)...

 

so act pressure plate and stock clutch would be the same?

 

are u serious?... cause i am seriously considering what u just suggested.

 

Ok so the exedy stage 1 clutch does it use a stock pressure plate or is it reworked also

 

Your last statement speaks volumes. And yet you still insist it's the clutch's fault.

It's an amazing thing that the guys with the least number of tranny/clutch problems are in the super/turbo forum, and yet they're the ones putting down the most power to the wheel.

Clutches don't kill trannies, people do.

 

I am with briguy....why the f@#k do people buy performance clutches??? one purpose: to get the power to the ground as quick as possible...not going to be accomplished with a slow shift....

shogun...man look at your 1/4 times....how long did it take you 14s???...theres no doubt in my mind one of the reasons you've had your clutch so long is cause you baby the shift....

alot of the 5spd SCed guys are putting down what 80-90 more hp than us NA guys??? yet running about 13.8s????? i doubt they are shifting their cars hard.....

I HATE THE FACT THAT YOU GUYS ARE SAYING ITS THE DRIVER...F@#k that for real.
The trans cant hold the clutch is what it is...its not that its a bad clutch...just not the right clutch for our stock trans.

 

The reason you get a performance clutch is to prevent clutch slip at high power levels. If you got the clutch so that you can abuse the drivetrain, then you got what was coming to you.

Everything you do has a consequence. The ACT allows you to abuse the transmission more than the stock clutch, and the Maxima tranny can handle only so much. I'm sorry that people are learning that the hard way.

 

I dont abuse my car/tranny, I had to pay for it and I dont wanna just drive it like a bat out of hell or think its the fastest thing in the world. But I do goto the track and have fun w/normal racing people or whatnot. I think a few of you are just abusing your cars everyday. Dont blame the clutch.