clutch problem? difficult to shift, locked out

[jakes97gs]

Hi guys, last week I was driving my car home when all of the sudden my car got really hard to shift, at the next intersection I got locked out of all my gears and I managed to jam it into first with some rpms and then drive it home. when I got home the first thing I checked/messed with was the clutch pedal adjustment since I had a similar experience awhile ago with my non-turbo and a pedal adjustment. when I crawled under my dash the jam nut for the master cylinder rod was loose and doing nothing and the rod seemed further in (shorter) than it should have been, (my pedal had pretty much no free play) So I adjusted it out to lengthen it, and started the car and checked the gears and then went for a test drive. all was well for about 4 days, and then when I was driving along the other day it shifted real hard and then locked me out. I turned off the car and put it in first and started it again, and then it shifted beautifully, I drove another mile or two and had no problems. also the first time I had the issue, I got home and checked my fluid level and it was above max, pretty much as high as it could go, so I removed fluid just enough to bring it to the max line, and now last time it happened the fluid was above max again. Any ideas? I have watched the jacks transmission video on adjustment and tried to do that with my dad but the slave cylinder never got too hard to push in, we did notice that at a longer rod adjustment the slave cylinder would push in and wouldn't naturally spring back (or if it did it was very slow). due to the intermittence of my problem I would imagine it's not necessarily an adjustment issue, could it be air in the lines? or maybe my slave cylinder is bad? its been raining the past few days so I haven't been able to go pull off the slave cylinder boot and feel for fluid but I didn't see any leaks anywhere from the mc or near the trans, and my reservoir is above max now so... Thanks in advance for any help

 

[dfootedsm]

It maybe clutch drag. press the clutch all the way in 1st gear and rev it high almost redline. if the car moves forward your clutch should be adjusted this is common with aftermarket components

 

[1992 Eagle Talon TSi]

I had a similar issue and my clutch disc had three broken springs. It would work intermediately and I thought it was the master cylinder so I replaced it and all was good for a day and then it was back. So I just dropped the tranny and pieces of the springs fell out of the bell housing.

 

[n0de]

Try having someone watch the actual transmission while you press the clutch in, check for movement in the transmission. I'm unsure of if you or someone has previously removed the trans, but maybe one of the trans bolts weren't put back, or the bolts have backed out allowing the trans to move away from the engine.

 

[jakes97gs]

So I ended up replacing the slave cylinder, since it was a little iffy, and that didn't help at all and I started getting a gross noise like the clutch was hitting something, so I decided to pull off the trans and when I did, I saw that my act 2100 pressure plate had two fingers broken off of it, 1 was jammed into the disk in a way that probably caused it to not want to disengage, and the other was nowhere to be found. So that was my problem, seems crazy that I managed to break fingers off though, I'm not making much more power than stock and I really don't drive my car that hard... oh well. thanks for all your help guys