July 26, 2013.
We're headed home from work, just about to get on the freeway and I push the clutch in to change gears.
The clutch never comes up.
I reach down while trying to keep an eye on the road, squirm my fingers behind the pedal, and physically pull it back out. I'm now in 3rd gear. Not happy, we pull over before getting on the freeway and I give the clutch a try again.
The clutch never comes up.
At this point I know something's wrong, but I have no idea what, so I put the truck in second gear and off we go - a bit slow (with high RPMs) on the freeway, but we make it home. Then, for the first time ever, I call a tow truck and the truck gets towed off to the dealer.
Now, you'd think that with less than 60K miles, whatever was wrong with my clutch would be covered under warranty, but no. Apparently 14 years is longer than the warranty period (what?!) so replacing the clutch master and slave cylinders was on me.
Sure hope I never have to tow the truck again.
You may have discovered this since, but you can shift gears without using the clutch.
It is called float shifting (Google & YouTube) I heard about back when I had a 914 and of course had to practice it until I could do it smoothly.
Yep, I'm great at clutchless shifting, which is something I actually got good at on the motorcycle before the Tacoma (since, until 2016, I was largely a "biker." Since using the Tacoma more (2016 or so), it's now become a fun activity in the truck as well!
Hmmm, biker? now I have "Born to be Wild" running in my head.
That shifting is a good offroad skill to have, just in case...
I have not had a manual transmission since 2008. Expect I would be doing grind-o-mesh shifting these days.