something made a funny noise then it was making a loud whining noise. now it is making a cluning noise all the time I have the clutch out and in gear. going around corners in gear it makes a loud clunking noise and the engine like hesitates. I'm thinking halfshaft or cv? It also steers funny in neutral.

Any ideas? (besides I am a moron?)

It could be about anything. The spider gears in the differential may have broken/chipped and the chunks may be causing it to lock up and jam as you turn corners (which might explain the funny steering). It could be a broken spring in the clutch hub (not likely to cause steering problems), a broken motor mount (letting the motor shift and clunk and causing it to do odd things and the list goes on.

This one may be pretty hard to narrow down from an online description.

lmao.

wow.. with a car that light, and an engine that unpowerful.. are the internals of it made of metal forks and spoons?

Thats almost as bad as me doing neutral drops in my beater

Could be a motor mount, or a cv joint. Or both. Put it in reverse and side step the clutch, everything should return to normal.

That could also be the transaxle too. These are tough to sort out. We replaced both cv's on Jen's grand am because we were getting a clunking/knocking on tight turns. Turns out it was the transaxle. I was going to dive into fwd repair hell, but I blew the motor up before I got a chance :-) . Being able to put a long screwdriver into a spark plug hole and hitting crank shaft is a bad thing :-)

I'm putting my bet on the clutch. That thing is the size of a ATV (four wheeler) clutch. It could easily be actuated motorcycle style with a hand lever. The front LCA's are ATV sized also also.

My buddy put 300,000 miles on one of the early three cylinder models, but I helped him swap motors twice to do that. On the first motor swap, the salvage yard put the motor in the back of my pickup with a fork lift. When we got to the shop, we were trying to figure out how to lift the motor out of the truck bed. I grabed the motor with both hands to rock it and get an idea of how heavy it was, and I acidently picked it up! So I just carried in the shop set it on the bench!

yeah we are thinking transaxle. def not motor mount.

steering fights us sometimes too. we'll jack it up tomorrow morning and take a look. after driving it a mile it has a burnt oil smell to it, don't think it is clutch, think it is transaxle. luckily I have a buddy with a spare engine / tranny / transaxle. His spare has no clutch though, so we can either swap in mine (or better buy a new one)

a new clutch is $110 and a new flywheel is $40. At least the parts are cheap. I won't be sidestepping *anything* anytime soon anymore. I really need to swap out the tranny anyways since I lost 2nd gear over a year ago due to powershifting.

i think I found conclusive evidence that it is indeed the diff. Pics to follow. We jacked it up and there is a hole in the diff large enough that I can see a gear. I won't be driving it until I get it fixed.

note to self - don't Piss off Cal!