Riptide

Yep mine has to come up at least 2/3 of the way off the floor before it starts to grab. Probably about 3/4 of the way before it's fully engaged.

East87

Yea mine too. It grabs pretty late haha, like 3/4 as you said. Bad or no?

Riptide

Bad? I don't know. Seems like I've read about that on here more than once.

Norm Peterson

If that's the way you always use the clutch, and if you're carrying much power through it while doing so - that's extremely abusive. Lots of friction, lots of heat happening.

There's no reason the clutch can't be fully engaged by the time you hit about 10 mph, and no need to slip second at all. This is with respect to street driving, and it is possible to get 100,000 miles out of an OE clutch if you can drive like that at least most of the time. One of my cars has 14 years/110,000 miles on the original clutch and another has about 8 years/90,000. Neither is showing any signs of needing replacement.

If you drag-race or just launch really hard a lot, I doubt that you'd get 100,000 miles out of any clutch, but you probably wouldn't get that much life out of a few other parts either.


Norm

S281 E

Surprised the clutch burned out so quickly. I know of a couple of different owners who beat on their stock clutch and they are still going strong. Parts aren't too bad its the labor that kills you.

Norm Peterson

It's not the 8 months time or even the number of miles on the car that matter.

The questions that do matter are how many times the clutch has been slipped, for how long, and while carrying how much power. Essentially, it's a fatigue sort of thing rather than a time/distance estimate of lifespan. Most everything mechanical has a finite fatigue life, defined a little differently depending on the part in question. You can either use this all up in a hurry or make it last much longer. For some types of fatigue situations, think 1000 extremely hard uses vs millions of easy ones (I'm not exaggerating). Clutch life may not vary by 10,000 to 1, but that's the general idea behind fatigue life.

On top of that, since parts always have dimensional and other tolerances, the parts out of one box may last quite a bit longer than the parts out of the next box coming off the same production line even if they're treated in absolutely identical fashion once installed and in use. OP may have gotten a clutch where everything skewed its lifespan toward the low side of tolerance.

The way the clutch was treated in the first few miles of its life also matters.


Norm

Riptide

A point of confusion. No need to slip the clutch at all going into 2nd or 3rd? So you just literally sidestep the pedal and let it fly all the way out? Seems like that would be pretty rough unless you rev match perfectly.

Norm Peterson

Not sidestep, just let your left foot come right up at some reasonable speed. This probably won't be as fast as if you're going to knee somebody that you're in a life-or-death brawl with, but there is absolutely no need to hesitate or slow down as you pass through the friction point either as the car is already rolling. Lifting your right foot as you shift will let the revs drop naturally and the little bit of getting your timing down does come pretty easily.

Edit - I am assuming that we're only discussing upshifts, based on the OP's descriptions.


Norm

Riptide

OK. I certainly get the clutch engaged a lot faster going into 2nd,3rd, etc.. But there is a point right where it's engaging that I slow down the movement of the pedal briefly. I think we're on the same page just wanted to be clear about that. I have let it fly out before on accident without slowing it down at all over that engagement point and the result was usually a bit of a lurch.

PennState

I have a feeling, I need a new clutch soon too..