Okay.. I need the opinion of the veteran stick drivers in the house. Here's the story:

I leave with my girlfriend to drop her off at her house, and my friend follows me in his prelude. We hit a stoplight and there are three lanes, i'm in the middle and my friend is to the right. An Integra pulls up and revs his engine. I'm like, "alright this will be fun, 3-way race." So I turn off VDC, rev it up a little, light turns green, and i inch forward slowly and smell this horrible smell (it's a little hazy exactly what my feet were doing). I look at my RPMs and i'm at 7500, so I'm thinking "Wtf, my foot is off the clutch and i should be in first." After that, my foot is over the clutch, but off it, and i feel the clutch pop up into my foot. The smell i dismissed as the puttery engined integra and drive off. The smell got more and more intense, and it was definitely the smell of burning clutch.

Now I'm worried (even though my friend says it's alright, it's an Infiniti, the car can handle it, it wasn't that bad). Any advice/thoughts on the matter?
Thanks in advance,
-Slip

P.S.-Sorry for the long post

 

So, you're saying what happened is that the clutch got stuck to the floor (or something of that sort?) Go to a dealer and get it checked.. Just make sure you don't tell them what you were doing.

 

With a name like "slip", I too would be worried about my clutch.

 

The more important thing is did you win!?

Although street racing should be left to da X-box or Playstation..

 

If you are saying that your pedal was stuck on the floor, then popped up, I would recommend you get it checked out. Your master and/or slave cylinder could be on the fritz (or you might just need to bleed the line).

Just bring it in for service and tell them about the stuck pedal.

 

Your clutch knew you were going to street race and decided to butt-ram you for being a knucklehead..

Off to the dealer. Make sure you tell him the circumstances under which your clutch failed you - that way he'll be sure to warranty the work.

The driver of the puttery engined 'Teg was probably LHAO..

 

Your 6MT wouldn't happen to be an '05, would it?

There have been at least 3-4 other posts here regarding the exact same issue on the '05 6MT. The consensus thus far seems to be that the clutch pedal simply won't return all the way (engage) if you dump it above... ...I think it was 4500 RPM or so. Try it at 3500 and see if you get the same response. I'm betting your revs were up a bit when you tried to launch.

It would be good to be able to nail this down as an absolute response. Anyone else care to use your new G as a guinea pig?

 

Take it to the dealer, and let us know what happens.

It might be a saftey mechanism to prevent high RPM launchs, or dumps.

Hooman

 

A saftey mechanism that cooks your clutch? As apposed to letting it happen and... cooking your clutch... It's the same result either way, if you are at 5k rpms and dumped the clutch, assuming it was stock, it would likely just sit there and cook anyway.

 

Yes, but the tranny/driveline would also see the shock from trying to grab. And it would likely only sit there and slip if YOU slipped it. That's why the pedal returning halfway is suspect.

The clutch should always be your fusedable link, so to speak, in a manual trans car. It's the cheapest to replace. So it would still make some sense.

Of course, it would be nice to know if it's just a weak-*** clutch that can't grab under such conditions. But a weak-*** clutch is going to try to fully engage and THEN slip, not refuse to engage completely under high RPM, correct?

I'd love to hear from a service tech one way or the other on this.

 

I have experienced something similar to this. I don’t recall what I was doing though... I think just some spirited driving alone. Although I didn’t rev THAT high, it felt like the clutch would refuse to clamp down. Eventually the clutch pedal just popped back up. I am not very technical, but I suspect our stock clutch doesn’t have the clamping force to grab when the difference in rotation speed is too great.

 

yes, it's an '05. I wish I remember all the details, but it was just too fast-paced. I'm not sure if my revs were past 4500, but they could have been. I just know that when i looked down, the clutch was partially released, and the rpms were redlined.

 

wow, sounds like you did a good number there.

 

Friends clutch pedal use to stick to the floor. Dealer replaced the clutch master cyclinder and clutch. Then a few thousand miles later put a new trans in. This was on a 2003.

 

This is all over the board. Do a search.

The same thing happened to me a couple of times and I took it in. They hadn't heard of anything like this (yeah right) and took the clutch inspection plate off and said that it wasn't damaged. Then they gave it back to me. No problems with the clutch. Only after I've heated her up a bit during some fun on the street. It won't happen if you watch your rpm's and keep them below 4k during a launch. Quite frankly you shouldn't be launching above that anyway since you'll just spin 'em. Anyway, your clutch should be ok. If you take it in, please follow up with us and let us know.

And yes, this is g@y for a supposed 'sport coupe'. I've yet to own a clutch with this kind of temperament.