What kinds of things are actually bad for the clutch in a manual car? Using the clutch to hold yourself in place on a hill? Banging it into gear? Being in the wrong gear? Bunny hopping? Is going into reverse while you are still rolling forward bad for the clutch?
I don’t know that I would call some of those “bad”. They won’t harm the clutch, they’ll just add a lot of extra wear and tear on the clutch and make it wear out prematurely.
You get a lot more wear on the clutch when things are slipping than you do while the clutch is either fully engaged or fully disengaged, so all of that time spent holding yourself in place on a hill is equivalent to the same amount of total time if you were slipping the clutch during an acceleration gear change. When you are changing gears, you only slip the clutch for maybe a second or so. If you hold yourself on a hill for a minute, that’s equivalent to 60 gear changes. At some point you’ll start to overheat the clutch, and that will do some damage.
What do you mean by banging it into gear? Just slamming it into gear without using the clutch? If the engine and wheel speeds aren’t perfectly matched, that is going to put a lot of stress on the clutch along with everything else in the transmission. If you do manage to synchronize the engine speed with the wheel speed first, then it’s really no biggie.
Being in the wrong gear is probably a lot more damaging to the engine than the clutch, though too low of a gear will make everything spin at excessive speeds, which is bad for the engine and the transmission gears. If the momentum of the car is causing the wheels to drive the engine to a higher RPM, then that puts a lot of extra force on the clutch, which will cause some extra stress and wear on it. At too high of a gear you’ll just lug the engine, which is pretty harsh on the engine but won’t bother the clutch any.
I assume by bunny hopping you mean letting the clutch out too fast so that the car hops a bit. That will put some extra stress on the entire transmission, including the clutch.
Going into reverse while going forward (or going into a forward gear while rolling backwards) puts a lot of extra wear on the clutch. All of that energy that would have otherwise been dissipated in the brakes gets dissipated in the clutch instead. Shifting while going in the opposite direction is probably a bit harsh on the synchronizers as well.
Brakes are a lot cheaper and easier to replace than clutches. Use your brakes to hold yourself on a hill or to stop yourself first while changing directions. If you use the clutch for these types of things once in a while it’s not that big of a deal, but you are adding extra wear and tear to your clutch. Do it a lot and you’ll be replacing your clutch much earlier.
All of the above is correct. A shorter reply, albeit far less less technical, might be…any activity that generates heat. And that activity would be slippage.
All of the above. Replacing break liners is about a hundred times easier and cheaper than replacing a clutch or the syncronisers in your transmission, not to mention the damage to the engine caused by over/under revving the car.
Why on Earth are you doing any of the driving behaviors you describe? Completely unnecessary.
Definitely. It’s not just going to cause more wear and tear on the clutch, it causes extra wear and tear on the throwout bearing and all of the extra heat created can warp things, like the clutch plate and flywheel which then need to be resurfaced. Excessive heat sometimes even causes flywheels to form cracks.
The vast majority of cars don’t have a reverse synchromesh. You’re going to crunch your gears. Don’t do this.
Watch the following video for info on what not to do in a manual. Hill holding at 4:10.
Using a clutch to hill hold will wear it out really fast doing that. My nephew wore through a new clutch in fewer than 15 thousand miles, and he lives near Chicago. It would happen faster in a hilly area! I have put over 100 thousand miles on a clutch, with it still going strong. About the forward/reverse while rolling thing- gears will grind if you try that from forward to reverse, but they won’t going from reverse to first gear. However, that means the clutch disc and transmission internals will be spinning in the opposite direction to the engine. Don’t do it!
This. I’ve only owned manual transmission cars, and I’ve never had to replace a clutch.
Just out of curiosity: Have you ever allowed anybody to learn how to drive a stick using one of your cars? I imagine that the average learner does a little damage.
Looong ago I tried to teach my wife to drive a stick. We fought, she cried. A friend took her out in her manual transmission and she learned in a few hours.
That car (and that wife) were both traded in years ago.
The clutch pedal should be presses to use the clutch to change gears and then released. Holding down the clutch or keeping pressure on the pedal can wear out the throw out bearing.
The throw out bearing normally just sits there not doing anything and not spinning. When the pedal is pressed the bearing comes into contact with the clutch and begins to spin at engine speed. If the pressure is increased then the force is transmitted to the release mechanics and the clutch begins to slip or becomes disengaged. If all the pressure is released the clutch will engage and the bearing will spin with no load until it slows down and stops. If only some of the pressure is released from the bearing the clutch can engage, but the bearing will be carring some load and keep spinning at engine speed. This can cause the bearing to fail.
A throw out bearing can not be lubricated while in the car and it is not meant only for short periods of use not continuous use. Driving with your foot on the clutch pedal, or sitting at a stop light with the car in gear and your foot on the clutch can be harmful to the throw out bearing.
Taught 2 boys how to drive in a VW. No major damage while they were learning.
I actually worry more about when I have to get my car valeted and the valet pulls up with my car reeking of burning clutch. That said, I don’t think the very occasional mistreatment like that would severely shorten the lifespan. I’m sure some time had been taken off of it, but not before I had to replace the car. The last two manuals I’ve had I ran to 140K miles without any clutch issues (no replacement of any parts.) I’ve taught a couple people on both of those cars, and no problem, but my teaching methods are pretty gentle (I start with learners getting the car moving using nothing but the clutch, and only once they get a feel for the bite do I have them use the throttle) and I don’t remember it ever smelling like burning clutch like one out of every six or so valets does. (Which is why I just find self park now unless I absolutely can’t.)
I taught my sister and my wife to drive a stick.
New stick drivers tend to use the clutch a bit much, but in the grand scheme of things that little bit of extra wear and tear doesn’t mean much over the life of the vehicle.
When I taught my sister, I was still living in West Virginia. For those that aren’t familiar with the state, it has about four square feet of flat space. Everything else is on a hill. There’s a reason they call it the Mountain State. My sister kept stalling the car out trying to get up the hill where we lived. Finally, out of frustration more than anything else, she just revved the engine and popped the clutch. The car went up the hill. There was a cloud of smoke and two black lines on the road that went for about 20 or 30 yards, but the car went up the hill.
If you have a choice, teach newbies to drive on flat ground. Don’t subject them to hills until they get the clutch figured out a bit.
Old air-cooled Beetle? Those are easy to learn on. I taught my step daughter in a 1983 Datsun Nissan Sentra DIESEL. The low end torque made that car even easier to learn a clutch on!
I taught three boys how to drive and had to replace my clutch shortly after each one. Not right after, but suspiciously close. Boy #4 has yet to learn manual but I think I have improved my teaching technique.
Having spent quite a good deal of my life in Europe, I drove many a stick.
Since I always buy used and cheap I spend quite a bit of time as an amateur mechanic. The clutch used to be one of the traditional problem areas for old cars. Somewhere after 60k they were sure to go. For whatever reason I haven’t had to replace a clutch on any of my more recent high-mileage cars. In general cars and car parts seem to have improved greatly over the last three decades.
Shortly after WWII, living in Los Angeles, my father and a college buddy exchanged wives… to teach them to drive. “I have never,” he told me, “Done anything so wise to preserve our marriage since.”
Taught the second mrsmstr to drive my vw beetle. Just showed her how to shift and set her loose in a big empty parking lot. Took about a week to learn to deal with hills and a bit more to learn downshifting. Otherwise painless for the car.
What wears out clutch is excessive slippage by the user. Riding the clutch will wear out the throwout bearing.
Once the car is moving you don’t need the clutch if you have a synchronized transmission. So if you are gentle launching it in 1st gear it should last the life of the car.
As for learning to drive a clutch it didn’t take any time. I understood how it worked so I was able to just start driving. My first experience was in an MG that someone else owned. I was 15 and was playing in it (with permission) when I accidentally rolled it down a hill. The owner handed me the keys and told me to put it back where I got it. Fortunately the clutch had good “feel” and I was able to drive it back up the hill as if I had driven it for years.
I will say that it’s very helpful to learn in a car with a good clutch set up. Some cars come from the factory with too little clutch travel for the pedal movement. It makes it hard to get a feel for it. I can adapt after having driven them for years but some cars would have sucked to learn on.