So the other day I decided to go to a friends house who lives about an hour and 30 mins away. I got there just fine, no problems what so ever, then we decided to go up this steep hill with a road on it, we made it up a bit but we started smelling something burning and I could tell my car wasn't going to make it so we popped the hood and let it cool down and walked instead. So after about 30 mins we get back into the car, drive back to his apartment, no problems. Like 8 hours later we leave to get food and my car started up just fine, reversed just fine, but when we put it into gear it had almost no power. The fastest we could get the car to go was 20 mph and now it won't go anywhere. It's at his apartment right now but I'm getting it tomorrow. We called the dealer we got it from he said 99% of the time it's clutch fluid but we changed it and it still didn't work. Any ideas on what it might be? My dad swears it's the clutch plate but idk.

It's a 1998 Corolla VE stickshift.

Where is corolla when you need him lol .

clutch fluid, probably not

sounds like your muffler bearing is locking up when you put a load on the car, you said that you could smell burning?

but did u see any smoke ? clutch fluid would smoke, where as a bearing would more likely just smell and leave no smoke

the dealer is probably just trying to stick you with buying a new clutch.

how many miles are on the car? could be that your catilitic converter is heating up, wich could play into the muffler bearing

as long as your hydrotransfuser isnt locking up, you wont be in to bad of a hurt

rofl

car runs fine? just wont move? Put a clutch in it. I personally think burning clutches sort of smell like burning sulfur.

This post was edited by OMGNOWAYSRSLY on May 31 2013 03:42pm

There was smoke coming from the clutch when we popped the hood. It smelled like burning rubber but it wasn't the tires. He's not trying to get us to get a new clutch, he's a family friend and my family has bought at least 10 cars from him.

The car has 92k miles on it.

/E we're picking it up tomorrow and we don't know whether to take it to the dealers mechanic(He said he'd get the mechanic to do it for cost) or if we should just bring it home and try to diagnose the problem ourselves.

This post was edited by infinity. on May 31 2013 04:13pm

99.9% sure your muffler bearings are shot, 9 times out of 10 a bad clutch is missdiagnosed and its the bearings

id check those first

remember, dont throw parts at it, find out what the problem is first

Yeah that's what I'm planning on doing. My dad was trying to get me to buy a clutch plate and we don't even know if that's the problem. So how bad is it to fix muffler bearings? Is it something that I could do myself or should I have a mechanic look at it?

Thanks for the help btw.

for the love of god........

I was going to respond. But it appears you are in good hands. Good info

takes basic hand tools its nothing major. just make sure the car is cooled down before working on it, it is the exhaust so it will be hot if youve had it running