So i was driving home the other day and drove through and basically drove through a river. The next day I couldn't get my car into gear. I waited about 24 hours and it seemed to work fine. Now, a few days later, and my clutch or something is messed up. Whenever i'm in gear and I accelerate, even a little bit, and my car jolts like the clutch isn't grabbing what its supposed to. It doesn't seem to be getting any better either.

Should I replace the fluids in the transmission?

Do i need to replace my clutch?

 

if your clutch was hot when you went thru it you could have warped the flywheel or cracked the disk and is not making full contact anymore. you could try new fluid, couldnt hurt to spend $20 before dropping the whole transmission out, although fluid probably isnt going to help and you will have to put new fluid in when you get done rebuilding the inside of your trans anyway. good luck

(this is all assuming its a manual trans correct?)

 

Yes, It's a stick.

 

OK, how deep was the water? Higher than the lower door sills? If not, then likely that the transmission istelf did not get flooded (unless one or more of your seals are shot).

My first thought is the clutch. Was the water clean or silty? IMO water itself should not completely fry the clutch unless the flywheel and clutch were really hot and warped (covered in another post). If the water was silty, then yeah contamination could definitely give the friction disk some problems, but in either case they may go away with a little bit of driving.

Personally before driving the car any further and causing more damage I would check to see if the oil in the trans is contaminated with water. If not, then drive the car a bit and see if it rights itself after a bit of driving. Unfortunately if things do not get better fairly quickly, then yes you are looking at pulling the trans and replacing the clutch, pressure plate and potentially the flywheel (at least resurfacing).