[jstash2ss]

hi y'all. this past weekend i was driving home from a friends house at night and decided i wanted to kill a little rubber off my tires along my drive home. brought the car to a stop, traction off, revved it up and let off the clutch, as i normally would do when attempting a burnout. however, i immediately regretted my stupid decision to abuse the car. when i let out the clutch i heard a loud bang followed by a constant grinding sound. engine was still running fine with no errors indicated or no abnormal temps on my gauges, but the car would not move itself. i coasted the car in neutral and let it roll to an uphill hill before my house. walked home and towed the car home the next morning.

car still had the same issues the next day, would turn on just fine, go into gear just fine, but as soon as i gave it throttle the car would not move and a grinding sound could be heard. got the car up on jack stands in my garage and began to troubleshoot. i turned one wheel, and the other wheel and driveshaft turned like normal. I started the car in the air and the engine ran fine. i put the car into gear in the air and it went into first just fine and the wheels were both turning.

i was convinced i blew the clutch, so i first drained the trans fluid and was relieved when i saw the fluid was clear of any debris. after removing the trans i removed the clutch and was surprised to find that there did not seem to be any catastrophic failure with the transmission or clutch, just seemed like the clutch had gotten hot (couldve been related to the grinding sound i heard when giving throttle).

when i didnt find anything catastrophic in the trans or clutch, my next thought was the diff. i drained the diff fluid and did find some very small metal fragments stuck to the drain plug, but again did not see any of the catastrophic failure that i was expecting to see considering the undrivable state of the car. decided to remove the diff anyway to see if a large piece of gear was restricting the flow of some possible smaller pieces of debris. removed the diff only to open it up and see that all looked normal, and no wear could be seen.

at this point, i had removed the entire driveline of this car on jackstands in my tiny garage, and still hadn't found a good piece of evidence for my point of failure. i gave in and decided to call a professional. i called up a local performance shop near me that does a lot of work with 5th gens, and asked him for some advice. he said to bring it all over to his shop, so thats exactly what i did. loaded the driveline into the back of my truck and headed over to his shop. after him examining all of the parts, he came to the same conclusion i had. trans seemed fine, axles were good, driveshaft was good, diff looked good, and clutch looked a bit worn. his recommendation was to get a new clutch and also a new slave cylinder, as the clutch was the only thing that looked out of place. so i ordered a new clutch, flywheel, slave, billet release bearing support, and 3.91 gears (because why not while the car's all apart).

sorry for the long story but i just wanted to share and see if any others have had a similar "ghost issue" like this, and also if i could just be being dumb and this is one of the oldest 5th gen failures in the book. thanks to all who took the time to read, and any input is appreciated