Clutch fork broke- symptom of a larger problem?

2001 xtracab 4x4 v6,manual, 265k miles

Lost my ability to shift yesterday and hobbled over to my mechanic. Crawling underneath, we could see the clutch fork was broken and looking rather pathetic as it wiggled around.

he says it’s not often they break on their own, and suggests pulling the transmission to see what else might be going on (pressure plate, clutch, whatever). He’s an honest guy and great mechanic, but as I don’t have the space or facilities to do the work myself I figured I’d research if that’s really neccessary (as it is $$$) or if we can just replace the fork. The clutch was last done at about 170k miles when I bought it 6 years ago. I’ve since also done the clutch hydraulics (and a bunch of other unrelated stuff- head gaskets, timing belt).

 

I really doubt it's a symptom of anything, and anything it would be a symptom of us getting replaced during a clutch job anyway. Sometimes they break, killed one in my Nissan 300zx and it had 200k on it

 

You have to pull the transmission out to change the clutch fork anyway, I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit out the inspection hole.

 

Ah, thank you. If that’s the case, I’ll do the clutch anyways.

 

It won’t….

 

Besides how would you get the release bearing back in the fork and attached.

Maybe it could be done but the time spent and frustration a new clutch is being installed when ever the trans and case come out.

unless your trouble shooting a failed first clutch install failure.

 

The clutch fork breaking on these is very common. Been through it myself, but like mentioned you’ll have to pull the tranny to replace the fork anyway, so if your clutch is old and has some miles on it you might as well throw a new one in. Good name brand clutches can be had relatively cheap off of rockauto. It might save you a bit to provide your own parts and just pay labor.