My sister has a 07 Honda Fit with the manual transmission. She went for a road trip and she called my dad up and told him the car won't move. We had the car towed back to the house and he said that when he started it, put it in gear, and let out the clutch he car wouldn't move. What she described happening was that when she was driving up the mountain she experienced the car was losing power and being jerky and when they stopped the car wouldn't move when it was in gear. We assumed it was a bad clutch. We ripped out the transmission, pulled the clutch (which was chewed up), replaced everything from the throw out bearing to the motor and turned the flywheel. When everything was assembled, my dad went out for a test drive. He was able to put it in reverse and back it out of the driveway, put it in first and started going fine, went to shift to second, heard a pop, and the car wouldn't go anymore. When he got back to the house, he says them at he can shift it into any gear without touching the clutch and the car won't move at all. He hears a slight grinding noise but nothing from the transmission, speedometer doesn't move when he gives it gas in gear, nothing. The car is dead in the water. He seems to think the clutch is gone out again, but says that the pedal feels fine when he presses it. I think something internal broke. The shift linkage is connected properly and moving fine through all the gears. When he presses in the clutch, the fork moves about an inch. Where do we start on this?

 

Broken shifter cable?

 

Sounds like someone needs to pull the trans out again, inspect to see what happened.

I'd guess part failure, broken disc center, wrong splines in the disc (wrong part), or something of that nature.

 

We took a look at the shifter cables and when you move through all the gears, the linkage moves like normal and you can see the shifter fork connections moving on the outside of the transmission. They are nice and tight.

I was thinking that too. We got the (presumably) right clutch kit from O'Reilly's. Looking at their website and from Rockauto, there is only one disc available for that car, a 20 spline disc. He tried bleeding the clutch master cylinder and slave but the fork only moves about an inch when pressed. It sounds to me like the input shaft isn't making connection with the rest of the transmission.

Could it be possible that driving it up the mountain with the clutch failing caused internal damage to the transmission, particularly on the input shaft assembly?

 

If the clutch failed with some violence it can ruin the input cluster gear set, (This is a generic answer not specific to the fit... )

Always check the input shaft bearings for play as well, they can often be replaced without tearing the transmission apart.

 

Sounds about normal.

 

Thanks all for your help. We had to have the transmission looked at and the passenger axle was spinning and the driver's was not. We were told one of the gears in the differential broke. $115 and it will be done. The transmission shop said the clutch install was perfect and no issues with it. Unfortunately, this was an issue that neither my dad nor I have any experience with and given the time frame the car needed to be done, the tranny shop hooked us up. Apparently the differential gears can be replaced without having to remove the entire transmission, so that saved us a lot in labor costs.

 

^great story thank you for sharing!