03 WRX sedan with 52 thousand miles

I had the 30K service and a Helix up-pipe put in by LIC quite a while ago. Never had any problems until now.

If I'm on the freeway and going about 60, I shift up from 4th to 5th, give it a little gas and the RPMs go WAY from about 4K to 7K up and then come down to normal. Then I smell something burning that reminds of a burnt clutch....but I don't have clutch problems in any lower gears when just driving around.


Any ideas? Is the Up-pipe leaking maybe after all this time?

 

If your clutch pedal is released, you are gunning it and not going anywhere while the RPM go up, your clutch is dead.

Leaky uppipe would not cause that.

 

that's what I figured it would be but does it make sense that that does not happen in lower gears?

 

Email sent...

 

Quick response!
Hey LIC is awesome...what else can be said?

 

It makes a lot of sense. The engine and drivetrain, including the clutch, experiences greater load in the higher (numerical) gears. That's why it's very difficult to move from a dead stop using 5th gear - without the additional torque multiplication of the gear ratios, the load is too much. This is also why that if your engine experiences detonation, it most likely will occur in the higher gears.

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0==WW==0
"…axles of evil…" - george w. bush

 

your clutch is just slipping.. haha, any reason you may have thought it was the uppipe???