Broke my car being dumb, need some help diagnosing

[jstash2ss]

hi y'all. this past weekend i was driving home from a friends house at night and decided i wanted to kill a little rubber off my tires along my drive home. brought the car to a stop, traction off, revved it up and let off the clutch, as i normally would do when attempting a burnout. however, i immediately regretted my stupid decision to abuse the car. when i let out the clutch i heard a loud bang followed by a constant grinding sound. engine was still running fine with no errors indicated or no abnormal temps on my gauges, but the car would not move itself. i coasted the car in neutral and let it roll to an uphill hill before my house. walked home and towed the car home the next morning.

car still had the same issues the next day, would turn on just fine, go into gear just fine, but as soon as i gave it throttle the car would not move and a grinding sound could be heard. got the car up on jack stands in my garage and began to troubleshoot. i turned one wheel, and the other wheel and driveshaft turned like normal. I started the car in the air and the engine ran fine. i put the car into gear in the air and it went into first just fine and the wheels were both turning.

i was convinced i blew the clutch, so i first drained the trans fluid and was relieved when i saw the fluid was clear of any debris. after removing the trans i removed the clutch and was surprised to find that there did not seem to be any catastrophic failure with the transmission or clutch, just seemed like the clutch had gotten hot (couldve been related to the grinding sound i heard when giving throttle).

when i didnt find anything catastrophic in the trans or clutch, my next thought was the diff. i drained the diff fluid and did find some very small metal fragments stuck to the drain plug, but again did not see any of the catastrophic failure that i was expecting to see considering the undrivable state of the car. decided to remove the diff anyway to see if a large piece of gear was restricting the flow of some possible smaller pieces of debris. removed the diff only to open it up and see that all looked normal, and no wear could be seen.

at this point, i had removed the entire driveline of this car on jackstands in my tiny garage, and still hadn't found a good piece of evidence for my point of failure. i gave in and decided to call a professional. i called up a local performance shop near me that does a lot of work with 5th gens, and asked him for some advice. he said to bring it all over to his shop, so thats exactly what i did. loaded the driveline into the back of my truck and headed over to his shop. after him examining all of the parts, he came to the same conclusion i had. trans seemed fine, axles were good, driveshaft was good, diff looked good, and clutch looked a bit worn. his recommendation was to get a new clutch and also a new slave cylinder, as the clutch was the only thing that looked out of place. so i ordered a new clutch, flywheel, slave, billet release bearing support, and 3.91 gears (because why not while the car's all apart).

sorry for the long story but i just wanted to share and see if any others have had a similar "ghost issue" like this, and also if i could just be being dumb and this is one of the oldest 5th gen failures in the book. thanks to all who took the time to read, and any input is appreciated

[SSE 4 2SS]

When you say the trans is “fine”, did you put it in various gears while it was out of the car to see if the input shaft was causing rotation to the output shaft, especially in first gear, supposing you attempted the burnout in first gear…

I might at least expose the gears and shafts, to ensure no gears or shafts were damaged… Hopefully a performance shop checked this…

Broken gear, broken teeth, broken input shaft, main shaft or countershaft… I had a bit more power than stock, and my tr6060, had 300M shafts and 1-5 were billet gears… I was under strict orders to never load the trans in 6th gear, as it would immediately disassemble itself. I know you said you only found “clear” fluid, but you disassembled the diff, and it was fine, so I’m thinking it has to be internal to the trans… unless you broke the tail end of the crankshaft… very doubtful… but not impossible…

Good luck, I hope you guys solve this…

Here is a 300M input shaft on my car after a dead hook launch at Indy… I went on to run the Texas Mile with this shaft a couple months later… we didn’t know it was twisted, something the builder said could not happen but rather the shaft would break… Not only was the input shaft twisted, the internal shafts were so twisted they couldn’t get the gears off… That launch cost me an entire new extreme performance TR6060… ish… We only found this after removing the motor for unrelated maintenance… Bare in mind this is a “Viper Spec” input shaft and as such is substantually bigger in diameter than the 5th Gen Camaro input shaft…

[jstash2ss]

Originally Posted by SSE 4 2SS

When you say the trans is “fine”, did you put it in various gears while it was out of the car to see if the input shaft was causing rotation to the output shaft, especially in first gear, supposing you attempted the burnout in first gear…

I might at least expose the gears and shafts, to ensure no gears or shafts were damaged… Hopefully a performance shop checked this…

Broken gear, broken teeth, broken input shaft, main shaft or countershaft… I had a bit more power than stock, and my tr6060, had 300M shafts and 1-5 were billet gears… I was under strict orders to never load the trans in 6th gear, as it would immediately disassemble itself. I know you said you only found “clear” fluid, but you disassembled the diff, and it was fine, so I’m thinking it has to be internal to the trans… unless you broke the tail end of the crankshaft… very doubtful… but not impossible…

Good luck, I hope you guys solve this…

Here is a 300M input shaft on my car after a dead hook launch at Indy… I went on to run the Texas Mile with this shaft a couple months later… we didn’t know it was twisted, something the builder said could not happen but rather the shaft would break… Not only was the input shaft twisted, the internal shafts were so twisted they couldn’t get the gears off… That launch cost me an entire new extreme performance TR6060… ish… We only found this after removing the motor for unrelated maintenance… Bare in mind this is a “Viper Spec” input shaft and as such is substantually bigger in diameter than the 5th Gen Camaro input shaft…

yep, either shaft would spin when the opposite is spun on the trans. i also checked to see if the trans had more resistance to spin the output shaft as it went up in gears, and the increasing resistance from each gear was incremental. all seems normal. input shaft doesnt look bent in any way at all either.

[Moto-Mojo]

This will be interesting when you figure it out. Good luck.

[fz4k98]

Really sounds like clutch system. Vehicle in air and tires spin, under load and it will not. Clutch slippage is most likely issue. Bad slave would not disengage clutch to shift.

[jstash2ss]

Originally Posted by fz4k98

Really sounds like clutch system. Vehicle in air and tires spin, under load and it will not. Clutch slippage is most likely issue. Bad slave would not disengage clutch to shift.

thats my best thought at this point. really going to be kicking myself after the new clutch and slave install if the car is still beached.

[acutron42]

I think the 1st sentence in your 1st post sums it up. Tell us what really happened.

[Moto-Mojo]

Originally Posted by acutron42

I think the 1st sentence in your 1st post sums it up. Tell us what really happened.

Are you thinking 'fake news' has come to a car blog? Could be, I suppose. It's everywhere else.

[acutron42]

Originally Posted by Moto-Mojo

Are you thinking 'fake news' has come to a car blog? Could be, I suppose. It's everywhere else.

Maybe it's the ghost of shunt! It sucks to go through all that work to find nothing.