A little background about the car:

It's a 2007 nissan 350z, 6 speed with 44,000 miles. The car has a JWT clutch/flywheel, Z Speeed clutch slave cylinder, and wilawood master cylinder. The clutch fluid is ATE super blue and the tranny is running motul gear 300.

The issue:

In these past 2 weeks, the car has been extremely hard to shift into gear (especially from a complete stop). I need to really push the car into gear to drive. There is no grinding so I'm sure it is not the synchros. Odly enough, the more the car heats up, the slightly easier is to drive. Also on WOT shifting through gears the car acts normal. Anyone have an idea? I'm worried the car will soon become inoperable.

 

How close off the floor does the clutch engage/disengage ?

 

Almost as soon as you come off the floor.

 

Update:

Today when I tried to go somewhere for the first time, the clutch didn't sound like it was engaging and the car would not let me push it into gear at all. There was no give. After fiddling around with the shifter and clutch and 4-5 start-ups the car began to let me enter gears roughly.

 

You need to adjust the clutch. Engagement should be around half way for it to shift smoothly in all temp conditions.

 

That's the problem.

 

sounds like air in the clutch master/ slave setup or low/ no fluid. check for leaks if none- try bleeding it first. Its free and easy, if that does not fix it, well its a possibility that is now checked off the list. Don't throw money at something hoping it will fix the problem, start free / cheap and easy first. CHECK THE BASICS.
if it is getting worse it sounds like a small leak, or air in the system.

 

Well, I'm gonna take her to specialty z here in socal and have them go through the motions. I will update as soon as I find out the exact issue. Thank you to all of your replies!

 

Def not disengaging enough.

 

So I have an appointment for the 25th with SpecialtyZ to have the car checked out. Unfortunately today the car has pretty much crapped out on me and will not engage any gear.

 

mine is really hard going into the first 3 gears lately but once its hot its fine, which is wierd

 

You may want to change the fluid spoolin', but it'll do that when it's cold anyway.

 

Good news! Well Sebastian from Specialty Z called me today and told me there is nothing wrong with anything. Weird right? Well, apparently the reason why i couldn't shift is because the Jim Wolf Technologies clutch has some sort of paint on the backside of the clutch. What happened was it melted off after the track and built up behind the clutch disk. This cause a build up of pressure behind it pushing the bolts holding the clutch in place out, in effect loosening half of them. I was pretty much driving without a clutch. so he is taking off all the remaining paint on the clutch and tightening the bolts back to spec and adding lock-tight.

SAFE TO SAY I AM EXTREMELY UNHAPPY WITH MY JWT CLUTCH. AND I DO NOT RECOMMEND.

 

Oh wow I'm glad I read this i was going to get jwt clutch.

 

 

Thank you for sharing indeed. I am also glad I caught this thread.

 

For sure bud! I'm happy to save people some headache! All the repairs cost me almost the same price as a whole new JWT flywheel/clutch combo -_-