Hello everyone,

My girl friend recently bought a brand new 06 G35 coupe 6MT, and has had it for about a month now. The car only has 1546 miles on it (yes I meant to say one thousand five hundred and forty six) and Friday night the clutch blew out. I do not see how a clutch can go at 1500 miles. She drives to work and back daily, she doesn't race it and has only played with it a couple of times. So how the heck does the clutch go at that kind of milage. The dealership tech said that they would replace "this one", but that if it happened again in 10K they probably wouldn't. I told him if it happens again in 10K we are going to have larger problems then just the clutch, cough "Lemon" cough.

So has anyone heard of them putting in crappy clutches? I thought this thing was supposed to be a sports car, but damn I drive my Jetta a hell of a lot harder then I ever drove this and I put 55K on my first clutch. I just thought this would get at least 40K before having to change the clutch.

 

maybe you just had a bad clutch in the car... it is brand new car.

 

Clutch wear in 10K miles isn't going to constitute a lemon. 1500 miles is extremely low. With about the same miles on my '05 6MT, I can say that there seems to be enough wear that I'm sure a clutch replacement will be needed within the time I own the car (I've never had to replace the clutch on any of my manual cars in the past, ranging from 30K-80K miles).

At such low miles, I'd really have to look at your G/F's driving as a very possible culprit. The high clutch-engagement point has likely contributed to some of my early wear, so I'd assume the same could apply to your G/F.

Had a female co-worker who had a clutch replaced on her car with just 15K miles. I was surprised... ...until I rode with her!! She would let the clutch out half-way and feather the gas to keep her steady (on an incline) while waiting for a green light! That was several minutes of burning the clutch for every time she went through that light!

So she had no complaints of the clutch slipping or anything before it just "blew out"?

 

maybe she just doesnt know how to drive stick

 

Everyone assumes because she is female she can't drive a stick, and that is how the tech guy at the dealership is treating this case. I taught her how to drive a stick and I made it a specific point to make sure she knew what "riding the clutch" is and how to avoid doing so. I made sure she never feathered the clutch like that on a hill and just had to learn the caught point.

She spent almost a year and a half learning how to drive on my car. She knows how to drive a stick.

 

It has nothing to do with her being a female and not being able to drive a stick. You may have just got a back one, but if the second one goes in any period of time under about 30-50K (and even that is short), it's the driving style, not the clutch.

 

How many miles were on the odometer when you bought the car? Maybe they used it for a few rough test drives and the clutch got glazed before you even bought it.

Also... I know you said your girlfriend knows how to drive standard well...
But are you sure she doesn't sit there with the clutch held down while at stoplights(When she should have the car in neutral and release the clutch until the light turns green), causing very premature wear on the throwout bearing?

 

I will ask her about the stop light, becuase she might do that assuming she is ok because the clutch is disengaged. They are replacing the clutch plate and throw out bearing. So she might have been sitting with the clutch depressed, but I do that from time to time (only when it's a short stop), and I haven't damaged my throwout bearing.

When she bouth the car it had amlost 100 miles on it. So Someone took it out, and I am not sure how hard they were on that first 100 miles.

 

I really don't understand the sitting with the "holdthing the clutch in" thing. How does that pre-maturely wear something? I did that in my old Mazda MT (the car I learned to drive on as well) and that car had 120,000 miles on the clock. Everything else was falling apart, but the clutch was still good on it and I ALWAYS sat with the clutch in.

 

they meant feathering the clutch by keeping it half engaged to keep the car from rolling back on a hill...that will wear out your clutch fast...

 

IMHO the stock clutch sux ****! My first when went (actually the pressure plate shattered or so they told me) and luckily I got it fixed before 12K. It started making noises around 4K. Clutch was replaced and everything seemed great for about 3-4K when it went again. I finally got around to bringing it in at 18K and they replaced the tranny. I have an 03 and supposedly this was common but who knows. Initially they didn't wanna replace the clutch and asked if I learned on this car, after I told them I have been driving stick for over 12 yrs, they pretty much shut up. In addition, they mentioned that it was a good thing I brought it in before 12K as I would have had to pay for it after that!

It is important to baby the clutch for the first 500 miles. It is very important not to slip it during this time or to expose it to high RPM's. I would even wait about 800 Miles to be safe before you drive it somewhat aggressively.

As an FYI, i got over 120K miles out of the clutch on my old explorer and i drove that pretty hard.

 

See if they will let you take some pictures when they pull it out.

I've got my OEM sitting in the garage with about 10k on it. It's got a few hot spots, but it should since I went to the drag strip umpteen times.

It would be interesting to see what it looked like.

 

I'll try to explain a bit how it works, but unless you actually see what's going on.. it might not make complete sense. Anytime you have your clutch pedal depressed(pushed down), there is a bearing in the clutch assembly that is turning in order to keep the clutch plate from contacting the flywheel. This bearing gets hot and wears as you keep it depressed. If the throwout bearing wears out... it doesn't matter what kind of condition your clutch plate is in or how many miles you have on it, you're going to need to take apart your clutch and replace the throwout bearing(at which time, you almost always replace the plate as well and usually resurface the flywheel).

The best way to make your clutch last long, is to treat the clutch as a go-between for gears, or purely as a method of switching from gear to gear or from neutral to a gear. What I mean by this, is that you should not think of your clutch as being another form of Neutral. Whenever you're in a situation where you find yourself holding your clutch pedal down for excessive amounts of time, you will want to put the car in neutral and let the clutch out... then when it comes time to move, put the clutch back in and put it in gear.

You might want to take a look at HowStuffWorks.com in the section about clutches, if you want to try to get a visual idea of how it works... but the section involving the throwout bearing is very vague:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/clutch2.htm

Just keep in mind though.. anytime your clutch is pressed in, a part that can wear out is being worn down a bit(especially if you hold it down for a long time straight). When you're in neutral, there is practicly no wear.

 

Great they had to replace your tranny? I bet hers is F'd up too, and after this event I bet they try to void her warantee from here on out. So far her Stealership, which was supposed to ranked very high in customer service, has not lived up to thier name. Thier Technical support guy basically said a few things he shouldn't have, and he pretty much related her bieng female, to not knowing how to drive a stick, and then compared her to some rich kid whose parents bought them a nice car and they ragged it out. We will see what happens, but if another one goes I am going to be pissed. Why can't they just put a better clutch in a car they advertise as a "sports car", it just seems stupid to me.

 

My cuz with an Evo, abuses it every day, since he bought it brand new without worrying about the break-in period. He always keeps the car in 1st gear at the red light. Now with few mods and at 11k miles his car is still going strong. I would like to see at what point his throw out bearing is gonna go. I never keep it in, and have put on at least 60k miles on both of my previous MT cars before I sold them. We'll see how my G will do.