I posted a few weeks ago asking for recommendations about where to bring the car... I went with Fairfax Honda, and I can't say I was thrilled. The place is a complete zoo... WAY too many cars coming and going for my taste.

They ended up replacing the clutch master and slaves, which certainly needed to be done, but it didn't fix my problem (which is that, when cold, the clutch appears to be dragging, enough that it makes getting the car into gear when the tranny is cold a real adventure).

My suspicion is that I need a clutch, no 2 ways around it. But there's no way in hell it's going back to Fairfax. Does anyone know a small shop that does good work in the N. VA area??? I'd really like to establish a relationship with a good mechanic who can take 10 minutes to talk to me and get a real idea of what's going on before just slapping some new parts in and sending me on my way.

 

Maybe Curry's. A couple of the board members have used them. They're located in some industrial park near Dulles, I believe.

 

syncro?

 

No, it's not synchros.

 

Hi, I'm a service manager for Arlington Honda in Arlington. I actually used to work for Ffx Honda and I'd have to agree, that place sucks. Anyways - if you're interested I'd be glad to have you bring the car to us and let my personal mechanic for my S2000 take a look at it. Let me know through pm if you want.

 

I'm fine, thanks. I had the clutch replaced at a local shop. No more problems.

 

heffergm, what were your exact symptoms? i think im having a similar problem. when the car is cold, it is difficult to get it into 1st or R and sometimes even the other gears, the easiest way for me to get it into 1st is to shift into third, and then i can get into 1st no problem. this problem goes away after the car warms up, but i never had this problem untill i had the clutch replaced for the TSB. One other thing ive noticed is that if im on a VERY flat surface, occassionally when i try to go into first and it wont go, the car will inch forward jsut a tiny bit when im applying pressure to get it into 1st gear. ive tried taking it back to where i had the TSB performed, but they have been no help on anything since i hit 36K miles

 

That's pretty much exactly the issue I was having.
The bottom line is that the clutch plates are sticking in cold weather, and you have to force them apart until they heat up in order to get the car into gear (which is why you need to force it into third before it'll go into any other gears... for whatever reason, 3rd and 4th were the only gears I could get into until things had really warmed up). It's also why the car inches forward sometimes when you go for a gear, but it never slots in... the clutch was never fully disengaged when you stepped on the pedal.

Depending how bad it is in your case, you probably also notice that, when taking the car out of gear, say, when coming to a stop sign, it's difficult at time as well, and you can feel the drag.

I'd suggest starting by flushing your clutch fluid. My master and slave cylinders were trashed, so I had to replace those at the same time. Unfortunately, the damage was already done, so I needed the clutch done as well.

After getting the clutch replaced, the mech showed me the old one. It wasn't terribly worn, but there were clear marks on it (almost gouges) where you could see that the disc had been bouncing and grabbing.

What led to this in the first place, I have no idea, and they weren't really sure either.
In my case, the clutch was going anyway, plus I had the WORST decel noise you can imagine. So, I figured I had little choice and just got the entire clutch done. Problem gone.

 

What year is your car and where did you end up getting this work done?

Thanks
J

 

It's a 2000. I went to Curry's in Dulles. Some people don't like them, others do. But they're the first shop I've gone to where I didn't feel like the people were absolute pricks, and they got the car in and back to me the same day.

They're not cheap, but I don't want cheap... I want good work.