At Gateway this past weekend, we lost the junkyard tranny in our RX. We had just changed over to Valvoline synthetics before the race and I had been having the occasional problem doing the 4-3 shift. I had modified my "attack" on the track to include a 3-2 downshift on one particular turn (running 3.90 rear gear). All of this resulted in pulling off my fastest lap time there and running in front of several SMs and battling for 2nd and 3rd in ITA.

After about 10 laps in the thick of the race, I went to downshift into 3rd coming into turn 2 (basically out of the straightaway) and it wouldn't go up into third... tried 4th.. nothing... by this time I had slowed enough to try 2nd... it finally engaged and I went one more lap. In the next lap, the 3-4 upshift resulted in the motor reving to 7K then dropping back down to around 4500 and pulling from there. At about this time, smoke filled the car (smelled like clutch). By the time I got into the pits, reverse was barely there... 1st would pull slightly until trying to get on the trailer and then it would just feel like a broken u-joint at 60 mph.

We looked at the clutch and it is dry (thought a rear seal on the motor or front seal on the tranny might have let loose because of the smoke in the cab). Any thoughts on what happened and what we can expect?

Also, is it worth trying to rebuild the tranny or should we just throw another JY special in it and hope for the best. I was surprised at the number of other RX guys at the race that said to do the later.

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Scott
It's not what you build...
it's how you build it
Izzy's Custom Cages


[This message has been edited by Speed Raycer (edited January 05, 2004).]