I have a 97 SS M6. About two months ago I broke my throwout bearing. I was doing a 1 to 2 shift and I heard a snap and the pedal dropped to the floor and wouldn't go into gear. I dropped the tranny to find the throwout bearing torn to pieces. I replaced the whole clutch with a stock replacement with a new t/o bearing.
Now I was driving home today and it did the same thing...snap, pedal went to the floor, car stayed in neutral and I couldn't go anywhere. I'm pretty sure the t/o bearing broke again, I'll know for sure when I drop the tranny again.
What could cause this?
Slave cylinder? Clutch fork? I'm pretty stumped. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

Post a picture

 

I'll be sure to do that when I drop the tranny. I still have the old throwout bearing and the piece that broke off. It's seems like the fork is pulling the top ring off of the t/o bearing. For a short period before it happens, the clutch seemed to get real stiff temporarily and then return to normal. Happened a few times. Then snap...

 

This is the picture of a piece of the old t/o bearing. This is the top ring that is engaged by the pivot fork. It was pulled right off of the rest of the t/o bearing.

 

Yesterday I dropped the tranny and discovered this




Apparently my starter had exploded and one of those pieces was wedged behind my pivot fork which wasn't allowing me to fully depress the clutch. I'm concerned because I don't know how that bolt got there and what it goes to.
I installed a new starter and it starts up, but its a hard start, just like I was having for a while before my start blew up.

 

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the bolt looks like a pressure plate bolt.

You might have damaged some teeth on the flywheel, I would check them very close.

 

I was thinking that too. I glanced over the pressure plate and it looked ok. I also rotated the engine and I didn't see anything that looked like damaged teeth. It shifts perfectly, just has the rough start. I guess I should have looked closer.

 

It's hard to tell from your somewhat "blurry/out of focus" photo but ..... if that bolt in the picture has a 10mm head on it and is approximately an inch to an inch and a quarter long .... it's one of the bolts that holds your rear main seal mounting assembly to the back of the engine block.

If you still have this apart .... now remove the pressure plate, clutch disk and flywheel ... and you'll see that one of the four(4) bolts that holds the rear main seal mounting to the block is now missing.

 

And, (of course!), replace the rear main seal while you're in there also.

 

Wow, if that's true, that sucks. I'm pretty sure its a 10mm head and about 1.25" long. And everything is all bolted back up already.

Wouldn't you think that you would be leaking a ****load of oil with one of those bolts missing?

 

Post another pic of the bolt. This is a pressure plate bolt BTW:

 

Thanks for posting that pic, I remember the pp bolts looking like that, and no, the bolt I found looks nothing like that.

 

No, not really. The rear main seal housing gets pretty well "baked" on to the rear of the block, especially if your car has more than say 50,000/60,000 miles on it. I found one(1) of those very same bolts laying in my bell housing when I took my slave cylinder off to bleed it. My rear main seal remained dry for about another 10,000/15,000 or so miles before I replaced my clutch, flywheel and rear main seal and put in a new bolt back in the housing.

 

Strange, when I did my clutch swap a couple months ago, I also replaced the rear main seal and I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
Oh well, it's working at the moment.