It is possible to smell the clutch after a hard drive. I don't know wether to called hard driving or not. Pop the clutch around 4.5K and REGULAR shifting around +7K (not powershifting). That sounds pretty normal for a weekend spins right? But everytime i pop the hood it smells like i just did a 8Krpm launch. Is that normal, could the smells be from some other sourses? Anyone having trouble with their third gear? mine wouldn't catch.
NICK (only 1.5Kmiles)

 

Well my clutch smelled a bit while I had < 600 miles.

Now its making all kinds of off-throttle noise. Gonna hafta complain and get it replaced.

 

Sounds like you are riding it out too much between gears or you ride around with your foot partially depressing the pedal.

Check your driving habits.

 

smells like fish, no?

 

Sometimes after running fairly hard in 2nd in the twisties for 30+ seconds I feel like 3rd gear is locked out. It's happened 5 or 6 times. Lately under these conditions I've been shifting slowly at about 8K with no problems. Be careful when this happens as I've hit both 5th and 1st when looking for 3rd.

 

Yeah, that smell is your clutch totally overheating. It doesn't take much to do that on this car. If you want to see pictures of what you clutch and flywheel look like after overheating just a couple times, check out the write up I did on my clutch and flywheel replacement http://138.23.206.216/car/
you'll see the link.

 

OK, this may be totally off, but are you sure its the clutch? I recently had my tires replaced and when the car was up on the rack, I noticed that something had gotten stuck on my exhuast system and melted. Maybe it was a plastic bag or something, but it was all black and "drippy" looking in a melted sort of way.

Previous to this, I had notices a smell after driving, but didn't really worry about it. I figured it was "new" and something must be buring off. Well, something was burning off, it was a piece of plastic debris!

Moral of the story, look under your car! Could be a bunch of dead polymers. Maybe something crawled up there and died.

 

Hey Reverend, what kind of rims do you have, what size and where did you get them? They look fantastic on your car!

 

Song: I think I've spent enough time under my car to know if anything was stuck to my exhaust. No, if you go to the site I put the link to earlier (http://138.23.206.216/car/) you will see the pictures of my completely scorched flywheel and pressure plate and my shredded clutch disc.

Thanks! But I'll let you in on a little secret... you already have the same rims. You just didn't powdercoat yours :-)

 

Reverend, I was refering to YoungS2K's comment of a funny smell at the beginning of this thread, not to your post. I saw the pictures you posted and there's no doubt that sumthin' was up with your clutch.

I am taking my car in Tuesday for them to take a look at a bunch of stuff. I wonder what my cluch looks like...if they decide to go after the grind (which I have only experienced twice in over 3K miles), I may get to find out!