Hello Rennlist,

Its been awhile since I posted here, and I have missed the great discussions of rennlist. My father and I recently picked up a 1995 968 here in New Jersey. It has been a great car so far, and we really love it. The car has about 130k miles and overall looks fantastic.

The car has an extensive service history and mods that have been performed by a previous owner in NYC area. It has dyno sheets, that I will post later for the community. I'll have a different thread with the mods that have been done to the car for those that are interested.

The issue that arose last week, while driving home, my dad couldn't get it into gear. He's not exactly clear as to what happened, as his memory isn't the greatest (damn age!) but he got stuck. Car got towed home. The car has a lightened aluminum flywheel from 944haus, and I'm assuming a sports clutch but records aren't clear. Clutch was replaced in '08, and I guess about 15k miles ago.

Car starts fine, and idles fine, with no noticeable changes in the sound. Clutch pedal operates exactly the same, the gear shifter feels the same, and it makes the same sounds like the tranny is being put into gear. Now when you try to release the clutch, nothing engages, no sounds, no vibrations, nothing.

I jacked it up, the slave cylinder is extended when you press the clutch, and looking through the hole, it looks like release bearing is moving, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at in there. The clutch wear based on the measurement is about 25mm, which is within spec. I pulled the starter, and nothing looks out of place in there, and there is no debris in the bellhousing.

Any ideas? I'm not exactly sure where to look next. This car has the bellhousing access, so at worst I could pull exhaust and get a better view.

Thanks.

John

 

So it's like every gear is neutral?

Check if the linkage on the trans (what the long front-to-back rod connects to) is actually moving with the shifter in the cabin.

Another thing to do is to get the car in the air and look at the coupler that connects the torque tube drive shaft and trans input shaft. You'll want to have someone let the clutch out while you're under the trans (please be safe obviously) and see if the trans input shaft is actually spinning. That should tell you whether you should be looking at the clutch, or the trans.

 

Ok thanks Mike. I'll try this when I get home. Yes the car is up in the air, safe and sound. This is our 3rd water pumper 944=>944 turbo=>968 but luckily haven't had to try and figure out this issue yet, so I'm new to trans stuff. Its pretty hard to see the linkage on the trans, do I need to remove muffler? Or is it just way up on the drivers side of the housing?

To be clear, if it was a trans issue, the clutch side of the couple should be spinning?

 

So...let me clarify:

With the engine running, you depress the clutch pedal (everything feels normal...) and move the shifter into gear (shifter moves normally from gear to gear), when you release the clutch pedal the car doesn't move and pretends like it's in Neutral. Is this correct?

Based on this it could be several things, most of which go BANG when the break - Ring and Pinion/Diff, Torque Tube to Trans Coupler, CV Joint etc etc.

Best thing to do is get the car off the ground, get yourself under the rear end of the car and start playing around with things. Put the car in gear, try turning wheels, push and pull/twist on the axles, open the inspection ports and look inside to make sure no bolts fell out of the coupler and it walked or something of that nature. If you can, see if you can look down at the clutch disk, have the clutch pedal pushed to the floor (and held there with something) and have someone rotate the torque tube with the trans in neutral, if the clutch disk spins this means your friction surface is still attached to the center hub, if the torque tube spins and the clutch doesnt...well then it's clutch time.

Good luck!
Ethan

 

Ok some very good ideas that didn't occur to me. Yes everything seems normal, my dad did not report that anything went BANG, but I'll ask him again. I will report back more info when I get it. I was hoping it would be something obvious.

 

Same thing occurred to me last year - 2 weeks after acquiring the 968. On the motorway @ 70mph then revs just went up while the gearbox seemed to disengage itself - i.e. clutch working fine but in any gear there's no drive.

Coasted to the hard shoulder and tried a few things but to no avail. Everything behaves as it should but no gearbox engagement or drive.

Trucked back to the indie specialist under warranty. They were actually a bit vague as to root cause but I sort of established from them that the torque tube had 'moved' or 'slipped' from position (whatever that means), which suggested to me that it wasn't secured properly enough in the first place. The car had just been through an engine and clutch swap by the same guys a few months previous.

When I picked up the car I was told that a new clutch had also been fitted FoC although not the cause of the problem.

Sounds like you hopefully have a similar issue which should be straightforward to fix - hopefully. Probably worth checking the state of the clutch while things are apart and replace with a new one (but keep the current one too). Be interested to know how it works out for you.

 

Thanks for all the input, I think I made progress last night. All CV joints, couplers, and shafts, seem to be same as always, nothing appears broken or not connected. The shifter rod that connects to the tranny, is connected. Moving the shifter in/out of gears, is definitely moving stuff inside the trans, and it sounds like is getting into gear (with my head right next to case). I can't see the exact top of the shifter connector due to stuff in the way.

I put the starter back in, and started the car, with stick in "neutral". Upon inspection of the torque tube shaft, it is SPINNING. Following it back in front of the tranny, removing small rubber inspection cover, it is SPINNING into the trans. Moving the shifter and putting it into "gear" makes no grinding or crunching noises.

So it appears that somewhere in the tranny, something is not connected like it should. Maybe I have a similar situation as LM964. I'm going to start doing rennlist searches about this now, and see where the rabbit hole leads me.

 

Is it possible this got disconnected?

 

You can check by looking up through the inspection portal. Have a helper spin the crank until you can see them.

My car had a failure there about a year ago... the splines failed on the torque tube side and the coupler (thing with the bolts in it) was skidding over them. Trust me, I heard it loud and clear, and the car vibrated like crazy. Both bolts were still in. In fact one was seized in there.

Here's something you can do to remove all doubt. take the bolts out and slide the coupler off the trans input shaft (i.e. onto the torque tube shaft) to where you can see the two mated ends. Put the trans in gear and spin the trans input shaft by hand. Inspect the splines on the trans input shaft as well as the matching splines on the coupler - although they would have to be rounded out completely to skip without making noise/vibration.

This is one of the first steps when removing the trans anyway, so one less thing to do if you end up having to do that job.

 

Upon further inspection, the coupler between the torque tube and trans input shaft is properly connected. The trans input shaft is spinning like normal. So it looks like I have some tranny issues! Damn. Thanks for all the advice.

 

That sucks John!

I'd be very surprised if something didn't go bang in the trans, unless the internal shift linkage got stuck or something weird like that.

Maybe 968 transmissions don't go bang when they break? Because I know both 944 N/A and Turbo transmissions go BANG big time when they break LOL!

Good luck in your quest John,
Ethan

 

Thanks I appreciate it, it was my father driving, and he's not exactly clear as to what happened. He's older and probably got flustered by the whole incident. I'll update the thread when I have a better idea what exactly happened inside the tranny.

I plan on shipping it off to Kevin Gross for him to rebuild it. It will be a pricey painful repair, but its gotta be done...

 

Is this part attached at the transmission?

Photo credit SoCal924 in this thread sloppy shift

 

Yes I can feel it all attached, and can feel it move when shifting, but I can't physically see it, as its obstructed by exhaust, etc.

Should I look harder up there?

 

Put it into 1st. From under the car, spin a rear wheel while holding the other still (or just spin both wheels the same way), and look to see if the driveshaft spins. If it doesn't, there's a problem inside the transmission. Most probably the ring & pinion. Was the car making a loud jet-engine sound from the rear?

Diff / r&p repairs aren't cheap, but hopefully it's just that, and not any other damage to the gears, etc.