Note to self: never let friends drive my car ever again.

All right so I let my friend drive my 96 manual 3000GT SL Friday, back from Best Buy. It was all good and gravy, about a five mile drive back to my house, and he's doing fine. We live on a slight incline, however, being in the suburbs. I guess because his car is a piece of crap he needed to handle the incline in my car the way he would in his 93 Ford Escort. I'm not sure what he did, but whilst stalling the car twice trying to get it up the *slight* incline. Slight = maybe 15-20 degree incline. Anyway, whilst stalling the car twice, he was revving the engine high, not sure where (couldn't see the dash), and barely letting the clutch out, trying to baby it up the hill. Anyway, when he finally gets it into the garage and we get out, the nastiest smell I've ever smelled in my life is coming from my engine bay. I still don't know how to describe it, but it smelled basically like something was melting. Could not pinpoint exactly where it was coming from, but definitely from the bay.

Anyway, I let the car sit since then the last couple days, I had nowhere to go. I get in my car this morning to go to work, everything is fine, smell is gone. I pull out into the street, weave my way gingerly through the !#$% SUVs of Suburbia, and pull out onto the road. Driving is fine. 40 MpH speed limit. The engine warms up, and I punch it a little on my way to work, see if everything is fine. Simply put, when I give it gas, pushing the pedal about halfway down, the RPMs increase quickly (with the clutch let out) while the car doesn't accelerate, or does very slowly, not in normal correlation to the normal RPMs.... There is no wheel spin, as I don't hear any squealing tires or anything like that. It seems to happen in every gear if I push it a little, at least in 1-4 since I have no need for fifth gear on my way to work.

Any ideas? I was thinking a melted clutch....but I don't know all that much. What do you guys think?

 

It sound like the clutch...to me

 

Yup, he took a large chunk of the clutch's pads going up the incline. That was the smell coming from your car.
The slipping is from having less material on the clutch to grab the flywheel. The pads are probably smoothed out too.
You may get a second chance by moving the clutch pedal up a little bit...maybe not, if he burned off a lot of the clutch too.
Take note of where the clutch disengages and engages.
This happened to my car when I got it shipped to Hawaii...damn, noobs with manuals.