Hello, I own a 98' Eclipse GS, I'm having car problems sorry if this is the wrong thread to post on. But anyway, I was under the impression my clutch was going or needs to be adjusted for the past month or two now. First gear was a pain in the a** to get into, especially when the car had just been started. Sometimes it would grind, other times I'd have to damn near force it in. When the clutch was engaged and I was in gear, it would move forward. The guy who I bought it from had replaced the stock clutch with a stage one clutch....clutch background, sorry

So the other day I was driving and i heard a soft, fairly quick, ticking noise, still trying to identify where it was coming from, i kept driving. As I tried shifting from third to fourth the gear grinded, I pumped the clutch and tried again and my car stalled while I was going 40 mph. I turned my car on quick and and tried to put myself into third gear. As I did this the ticking noise got significantly louder, sounding more like a knocking or a chugging, I immediately pulled to the side of the road. With the hood open and the car running it sounded liked the noise was coming from my engine, which is stock.

The car was towed to my house and I borrowed someone elses car and went to work. My deduction is one of two things: something got into one of my cylinders and getting tossed around by the piston (maybe something got through the intake or something simply broke off inside my engine), or, similar concept, I broke maybe a connecting rod and it busted through.

So I get home and my mom said that the tow truck guy (who apparently is more qualified than myself, a 20 year old automotive student) said it was my clutch that went and that i should buy a new clutch. Now i think that is a bit rash. I know my clutch doesn't work perfectly, and maybe it is my clutch, to be honest I don't know, that's why I'm asking for some advice here; but the reasons my mom and the tow truck guy say its my clutch doesn't seem convince me.

They said they couldn't get it into gear. But thats how my car has been for months now, and I feel like if you don't know how you gotta do it than you won't know how to do it! They said that when the car was turned off, they put the car in gear and started it with the clutch in, and my car stalled. That happens to me every time I do that too, you gotta rev up the RPMs to keep it going. I feel like they just don't know whats common for my car and are giving me a solution that isn't entirely true and telling me to go off of that and drop 600$ on a clutch. Can someone please shed some light on my situation, or maybe help me narrow the problem down better? Thanks!

Carla