What are friends for?? How bout they show up and drop the tranny out of your M715 cause they know you can't and it needs to be done!!
Last summer, I was wheeling, going down a steep but short hill in 4 wheel low, first gear. I was rolling at less than a mile an hour using the brakes to keep from going faster. At the point where I had maybe 5-10 feet in front of the truck until I hit bottom and started going back up...due to the bottom of the hill not being of long enough length for the truck to sit flat on...I pushed in the clutch and let the truck roll with no brake. I might have hit 4 or 5 mph max by the time I was going up already, probably less, and as I was slowing on the uphill, I heard a "snap" come from the bellhousing area. It was not a good sound as my impression of the sound was like a pair of vise grips were locked on a bolt hole "ear", on say a bellhousing, was hit by a hammer and broken off...the noise I heard would be of that ear beaking off...not the hammer hit...like thick metal had snapped off. I was able to drive the truck 3-4 miles home...I could not exceed 40 mph due to slippage in the clutch. I had to make 3 stops to get home and take off from the stops...when I got home I pulled in front of the shop and then tried to go into reverse to back in the shop...no gears left...had to push it back in...
Well its been sitting there waiting for me to get to it...was too busy, then injured...anyway...
Kevin and a friend of his came over and pulled the tranny....then took pictures of the mess. I made a page for them with brief descriptions at the link below.
http://www.m715zone.com/jonmisc/clutch_carnage.html
Basically, the pressure plate side of the clutch exploded but the flywheel side looks fine. Most of the clutch debris was found on the engine side of the flywheel, with a coating of powdered or cottonny clutch material everywhere.
Have a clue what exactly happened in there?? The clutch pedal was on the floor when this happened...the clutch was not excessively worn and was adjusted recently...it had less than 10,000 miles on it. The pressure plate and throwout bearing were replaced with the clutch, flywheel had less than 20,000 miles on it at the time and was not resurfaced after a good inspection showed it was in good shape...the original clutch also exploded in the truck but this was due to a couple of reasons that do not have bearing on this 2nd explosion...at least I dont think so...
When I bought the truck it had 14051 miles on it...by the time it had 17000, which it had after about 5 months of me owning it in 1995, I had adjusted the clutch about every 2-3 weeks...since it was wearing at this rapid rate, I figured it had something to do with its age and low miles, etc. I bought all the stuff to change it and was headed to my brothers place to do the job when I entered a small town on the highway, after running at 55-60 mph for about an hour. I slowed to 30 mph in 4th gear and then pushed the clutch pedal in to slow down more. When I did, 1/3 of the clutch material on the pressure plate side of the clutch departed the disk. I stopped at a friends there, was able to coast in, and as I sat at idle there, I kept slowly letting up on the pedal till I heard an abnormal noise, then I pushed it back down...after spending several minutes doing this in neutral, the abnormal noise quit and I was able to drive it 25 miles on the highway after that without incident. Bump_r told me that the problem had to do with the old clutch plate being crushed under pressure for so long over the years and age deterioration, that when I bought it and started putting miles on it quickly, it started making a lot of heat and swelling up due to that...at the point where it failed, it basically failed while I was at speed and had swelled up waiting for me to push the clutch pedal down...when I did, the part that broke away did so because it was only being held in place by the pressure of the pressure plate...if I had pushed the clutch in at 60 instead of slowing to 30 first, it woud have happened then...a very different reason for a clutch to blow I think....
So look over the pics and let me know what you think...I'm still wondering if something else is screwed up besides the obvious clutch plate...did something else fail and cause this?? Am I missing the real cause of the failure?? I just cant see a good disk failing under the conditions it did...I have done that same thing before and never had any problems...what is different here??
Thanks for reading...whew I'm ready to rest after typing all this...took me over 2 hours!!
brute4c