2nd gear worn?, ...or is clutch on its way out Options

[troth]

Under hard acceleration, trying to beat traffic or pulling onto the highway, I get to about 3.5k rpm and then it feels almost like the car popped into neutral for a split second. The revs shoot up to red line and no power is going to the wheels. To the best of my memory this has only happened in 2nd gear. All my shift bushings are newish and I’ve had no other shifting problems beside this. No detectable clutch smell.

I’ve had this happen maybe 3 or 4 times over the past few hundred miles.

Could this be the clutch slipping and on its way out or is second gear getting worn? Last time I replaced the tranny fluid there was a good amount of metal shavings, but nothing too concerning. There’s plenty of slack in the clutch cable.

[troth]

Thanks for the input.

It's not slipping in any other conditions than the hard acceleration. Just went out for a ride today and it's driving like normal even in 4th/5th gear at lowish speeds I can't get it to slip. It's not like my 1.8 puts out that much power haha

I am leaning towards a transmission problem and not a clutch problem for this reason.

However, to further complicate things, I just remembered a small leak I had a couple months ago coming from the flywheel area. Is it possible I have a rear main seal leak and some oil is finding its way to the clutch on occasion, causing it to slip?

Just trying to diagnose this as a "Fix this immediately, do not drive further than 2 miles from home" or "get to it eventually" issue. I have no record of the clutch ever being replaced, so it probably should be soon regardless. But I'd like to stretch it another 2 or 3 thousand more miles until I can afford to jump down the "while I'm in there" rabbit hole.