After spending about 2 weeks reading through the forums I found a thread that concerned me. Someone needed a new clutch after just 15,000 miles. As a owner of a 3 week old 6MT, this concerns me a bit. My questions is this, how many miles can one expect to get out of the stock cutch, assuming one knows how to drive it, and rarely if ever does a burnout or otherwise abuse the car.

 

I think that was an isolated case. I'm at 31000 with no concern about clutch life. I expect to get at least 100,000 out of it. I had 150000 on my Jetta's clutch before somebody ran into the car (quite hard, and with me in it, I might add) and totaled it.

 

I expect AT LEAST...i repeat AT LEAST 150,000 out of the clutch....my last car had 170,000 on the clutch..and it was working fine when i sold it.....150,000 on the car before...

but then again..i don't beat on it every time i get into the car...i'm very easy going on it...at times hehehee..the clutch should last "as long as you own the car".

 

In 20+ yrs of stick shift driving I have never replaced a clutch and as a result do not even know what the symptoms of a bad clutch are. If you use the clutch properly, it should last you the life of the car. Unless the clutch is defective, people who need a new clutch in 30K miles are not properly using a clutch or go to the track.

 

Anytime anyone needs to replace a clutch before at least 100,000 it could either be a bad clutch to start out with or is abused to all hell (people learning to drive and grinding through ALL gears).

With proper driving, you should definitely not have to even think of replacing your clutch.

I'm nearing about 85k on my car and the clutch is the same as it was when I picked it up some 5+ years ago.

The cases of having your clutch replaced are to be considered isolated, not the norm.

Regards

 

http://forums.freshalloy.com/ubbthre...e#Post67966398

https://g35driver.com/forums/showthr...ghlight=clutch

See these two threads. One is from FreshAlloy, one's from here.

 

My guess is that these are isolated incidents. If it's not, I'll go back and find the kid that bought my 97 Maxima and buy it back ... I do not want to have to deal with that kind of nonsense. I've only driven manuals, and I haven't had to replace a clutch since my 85 Honda CRX! I'm gonna have faith in Infiniti that the 05s aren't going to have these sorts of issues, otherwise it'll be trade-in time.

 

it's tough to place the duty cycle of the clutch simply based on milage. Clutching techniques aside, it really depends on one's daily commute profile. I do mostly freeways and the original clutch is still going strong at 58,000 miles. I would think a much lesser fate, if I was located in down town San Fransico with rows after rows of highly exaggerated steep streets and plenty of stops. Clutch slipping is a requirement and there's not escaping it.

So, use your better judgement on this one. For the most part ... steep hills not withstanding ... if one's replacing their clutch at 15k or less, something just doesn't sound right. May be soemthing is defective or one's technique needs to be investigated.

 

I vote for the latter based on the following equation:

260 lb/ft (tq) + clueless & abusive driving style factor (cf) / number of attempted smokey burnouts (sb) = G35 clutch life, expressed in number of remaining parking-lot donuts (pld)

This forum is fun to read and occasionally offers an interesting technical tidbit or two (although the longer I'm here, the more I think that's strictly by accident), but the overall level of automotive knowledge, driving skill and emotional maturity puts it down there with civicsrus.com. It's a wonder any of the seemingly endless number of high-school and college boys driving these cars get more than 10,000 miles (57 plds) out of a clutch disc.

 

I love the equation. I would say for the most part my nerves have been put at ease. When I was 20ish I went through my share of transmissions, rearends clutches etc... Now after another 20 years of driving I see the value in being able to do more than sb's + pld's