just like the title says, my clutch is slipping in 4th and 5th. well this is what im assuming is going on. hammer down in 4th and 5th and the tach dances as it goes up and i can hear the engine rev'in very un even. and its not wheel spin. im just running the gm upgrade and im at 30000 miles, please tell me there is an easy fix ( dont say not to floor it in 4th or 5th, and don't say i shouldn't go that fast ) is this typical for the clutch to start to give out at this mileage. i dont drive hard all the time and i dont NLS all over town. help...

 

that shouldn't be happening at that mileage. our clutches are actually pretty good. but it does seem that your clutch is shitting the bed. sucks to hear good luck with getting the problem resolved.

 

If the clutch is slipping in 4th and 5th its shot. No easy fix, no adjustment, no repair. The clutch itself and flywheel must be replaced.

It is not normal for a clutch to be shot at 30,000 miles on any car. The LNF clutch is pretty heavy duty, you'd really have to try to kill one in 30K. Did you learn to drive standard on the car or was it previously abused?? Something is not right.

GM may cover it under the powertrain warranty, but if they pull it apart and it shows signs of severe abuse, you can bet its not going to be covered.

 

Sorry to say what you asked not to be told, but no, you shouldn't be flooring the car at low RPM's with a tune. 5th gear is a definite no-no, and 4th with my Trifecta tune is the same way. Our clutches are NOT that stout of a unit, they are only rated to something like 300ft lbs of torque. Mine started slipping the first winter after I got my Trifecta tune. This is not the same issue with the GM tune as the car should not be making more power in the winter with the GM tune. Anyways, you have 2 options:
1) Learn how to drive a higher horsepower car with a stock clutch
2) New clutch

I have already done #1 myself after hearing my clutch slip a a couple times and realizing what it was. #2 will come sometime later this year.

Good luck getting GM to cover a wear-and-tear item like the clutch over 12k miles on the clock...

 

i learned to drive on a chevelle with a centerforce clutch and a rock crusher tranny behind a built 406sb, i abused it, and trashed it as any dumb teenager would with a muscle car and it is still holding to this day with over 50000 miles on that clutch. but with this car i definitely didn't treat it with the same disrespect. it holds fine in 1st through 3rd and most of the time in 4th. these are not low rpm pulls, im talking about 4500 to 5500 which is where i usually work the engine. i dont take it much past that ever. ive seen alot of vendors with alot of clutches all claiming the others are crap and theirs are the best, centerforce is the only after market ive ever dealt with. the stock clutch from crate engine depot is cheap i can change it my self, should i stick with the general or go aftermarket?

 

id go ahead and go aftermarket. mine did the same thing in 4th and 5th but only on trifecta... i have the gm stage 1 as well with 46k miles and mine doesn't slip. i would go with the spec 3+ or exedy clutch.

 

my uncle has a heated garage and a lift so i have that at my disposal (lucky me) but ive never changed a clutch on a cobalt, ive done a chevelle and a berreta. am i correct to assume it shouldnt be any harder than those ?

 

there is a TSB out for the ss/tc. hairline cracks are forming inside the bellhousing causing fluid to contaminate the clutch surface I don't don't have access to alldata at home so if I remember monday i'll grab the service bulletin number.

 

yeah, I remember the days I abused my 03 SRT-4 and the clutch went out on me at 5k. Started slipped really bad where I wasn't getting anywhere on the speedometer, then later my clutch finally blew up. So far I'm on 10k with the stock clutch a HPTuned running 25-26 psi WOT

 

please do! is this something they can check with out charging me for their labor? i dont need them to tear it all apart just to say yup its fried gimmie 200 bucks for that

 

mabby givin it at to low rpm

 

Its the only draw back i have with my tune, having to down shift every time i pass somebody, annoying but the good thing is i pass in style...

 

My first car was a 72 nova SS with a 427 and M-22 rock crusher ..... It had a LS6 clutch in it and you couldn't hurt that thing if you tried . I remember one time the tranny was stuck in 4th and i was 30 miles from home..... with the 4.56's in the rear i had to stop a few times and was able to start out in 4th lol.

These cars are a whole different ball game .... my car will slip the clutch if i forget and lay into 4th or 5th under 3 k rpm ... otherwise it's good .

 

HAHA that drivetrain owns the LNF on hands down. They call it a rock crusher for a reason, I miss driving my uncles M-22 equipped camaro, and the clutch was obviously chosen to take that much power. Sadly the LNF trans and clutch aren't as durable as your chevelle. I say get an aftermarket clutch. If you throw in a replacement from the General it could do the same thing at 60,000 miles... Get a badass clutch and be done with it, aftermarket is always better.

 

If you decide to go aftermarket with a clutch replacement, I have a for sale thread for a brand new exedy hypersingle. Check it out, and good luck with getting the car back to normal.

 

So after reading this thread and many others similar, it is apparent to me that the following is true, if you are Trifecta (or any other tune) equipped, which I am:

It is OK to "floor it" in 4th or 5th gear, so long as the RPMs are at or above approximately 3000 RPM?

I drive mostly highway miles 65MPH+. At 80MPH in 5th gear, I'm turning almost exactly 3000RPM... mashing it in 5th gear at 3000RPM (80MPH) rarely, if ever, produces a slipping condition, although at speeds lower than that, I have certainly noticed conditions described by the OP. Not so much in 4th gear however, because I don't use 4th gear all that much, unless it's a hard-passing situation where I'll come down from 5th gear and 5th gear-related cruising speeds.

Thoughts?

 

Downshift.

 

Ok, first off, like said above, if your clutch is slipping in 4th and 5th, its the beginning of the end for it. It will get progressively worse over time... each time you let it slip, you are destroying it a bit more.

And secondly, flooring it in 4th and 5th did not CAUSE the problem, its a symptom. I'm willing to bet something more along the lines of a fucked up burnout(slamming it into another gear during a burnout, and not getting full engagement) or you let someone borrow the car, and the rode the hell out of the clutch without knowing... something critical had to of happened to burn it out that early.

So yea, go aftermarket, and either quit doing burnouts, or quit letting people borrow your car.

 

According to Vince, it's never OK to floor it in 5th and even in 4th you should smoothly go to full throttle and not just floor it. I can get mine to slip in 5th gear anytime I wanted to (not saying that I try, it was accidentally learned) and even in 4th on a cold day going to quickly to full boost can result in a bit of slip.

 

I have driven a standard for over 10 years now, I have NEVER abused the Cobalt and no one has driven it but me. The car had 40 miles on it when I bought it. The slipping is a symptom of nothing but too much power to the clutch. It didn't slip in the Summer, the first time I noticed it was when the weather got cold with my Trifecta tune.

Going aftermarket is the solution I will go with when it is necessary to change my clutch out.

 

f-ed up burn out? really? well that's nice, kiss your mother with that mouth?, i went over to the other forum, gm sport compact net and checked on this issue, Mr powell race shop him self said in a thread that its not the clutch disk that's wearing out, he said hes seen more than a couple clutches where there is no heat stress visible the disk looks fine, its just the pressure plate is garbage, mostly on the LSJs but its possible with the LNF, and cant floor it in 5th? how is any one supposed to do any kind of high speed driving? and every one keeps screaming bloody murder about low rpm and to much boost at to low an rpm well my second post on this thread i said between 4500 and 5500, now maybe thats low to you all who are running upgraded valve springs and can swing the motor to 8500 but thats pretty high rpm for me, i learned to drive on a car with almost 4 inches of stroke in the motor, and that dosnt lend it self to high rpm, every one seems to go negative right away, simmer down stop dropping f bombs in my thread and be constructive i appreciate the input and im pretty sure that as soon as i get my brakes fixed from GM giving me bunk ones in the back i am going to upgrade my clutch, and for the record i do tons of burn outs in my chevelle, power shift my V gate shifter like there is no tomorrow and it has never had a problem with clutch slip from me flooring it in 4th gear, and i have a 2.73 rear end, obviously the power trains now a day is not as bullet proof as the good ol days , i know that comparing these cars is apples and oranges but it would of been nice to have my new car be able to handle its stock power for atleast 75000 miles

 

Haahaha..... My brothers use to laugh when i powershifted my nova ...... they said i used my whole body when banging gears. The only casualty was a pin or two on the shifter linkage. Oh and low RPM in my book is 25-3000rpm 8)

 

Damn guy, take a chill pill.... If you can't handle someone saying ****, maybe you shouldn't be on the internet without your net-nanny turned on....

By flooring it in 5th I mean taking your foot from a 65mph cruise position, and instantly putting it to the floor. I don't mean that you can't have your foot on the floor while in 5th gear, but to be honest, 4th gear takes you to what, 148mph??? So the only way you would need 5th is for that 148-160 range. How much time on the streets do you spend at those speed???

I also believe we have a different pressure plate then the SS/SC guys did too, but I'm not 100% on that...

Why you would even bring a Chevelle into this discussion is beyond me...

Finally, your first post you said you are running the GMS1, which in case you didn't know, did not come stock with the car, so no, you're not running stock power levels.

 

Agree..I don't see any problem nailing it at 3000RPM.

 

Same **** with my car. The fix for this problem is to downshift