Clutch

Xino Kiner typed until their fingers bled, and came up with:

he engine will rev up faster than the car is accelerating. At first, you'll notice it under high load situations - going uphill, trunk full of heavy stuff, trying to rocket away from stop signs. Then it will get progressivly worse.

when I first asked this question, I was always told "you'll know." Having experienced it (at 95K miles in a car that for the 1st 55k was driven by teenagers, then for the next 40 driven hard by me), I can tell you - "you'll know."

True dat. It will often smell bad too inside the engine - often getting sucked into the passenger compartment when the fan is on. Smells like burning brake pads (because that's basically what it is) which smells acrid and pungent - like burning leaves sort of.

Once, however, on a 1983 Audi 4000 - it just collapsed after what seemed to me to be an unfairly brief warning period. I just pressed the pedal, I heard a "thunk" in the engine, the pedal went dead and the car stalled.

End of clutch. :)

-e