I have a 96 Escort that I’m about to get rid of. There’s 125,000 miles on it and it still has the original clutch. I’m the only owner and driver of the car. Every time I say something about how many miles I have on the car and the clutch everyone thinks that’s a lot of miles and wonders how I got that many out of the clutch.
I’m planning on giving it to my brother-in-law since the car is still in good running order, it passed inspection with no problem. However, I really don’t want to give him a car that will need to have money put into it.
So is it a lot of miles for an original clutch? Should I worry about giving it to him, or can clutches get a lot more miles out of them and everyone else just can’t drive them? I was never really hard on it since it was my car and I wanted it to last. I didn’t downshift to slow down a stop lights, though I did use engine braking when needed. I’d also like to know since the new car is a standard as well and I want to keep this one just as long.
I have a 1997 Mazda B2300 pickup with just over 200,000 miles, and it’s still on the original clutch.
A large fraction of those miles were on the freeway. My driving style is fairly gentle, and nobody ever accused this truck of having too much power or torque. All of these factors have helped contribute to long clutch life, I think.
Based on my own experience, then, I’d say there’s a good chance your Escort’s clutch has many years left in it. Unfortunately, we’re dealing with probabilities here, to a large extent.
A lot of people don’t know how to shift a manual transmission correctly. If you match revs properly, the only wear on the clutch will occur when you’re getting started from a dead stop.
I know several people with 200,000 miles on their original clutch.
I am not talking about double-clutching or heel-toeing, just rev-matching. Meaning, when you upshift or downshift, make sure that the engine is turning at the right speed for the gear you are entering. That way, you can take your foot off the clutch in one quick motion. With the engine and clutch turning at the same speed, there should be basically no wear on the clutch. You shouldn’t feel any jolt when you do this - if you do, you did it wrong. You feel a jolt when the speeds are mismatched, and the clutch and flywheel have to grind against each other in order to synchronize.
Note that, in order to accomplish this for downshifts, you will need to jab at the throttle to get the RPMs up to the correct level. It takes practice, because you need to learn the spacing between the gears.
I’ve owned 3 cars with manual trannies…a 1981 VW Rabbit, a '96 Plymouth Neon, and an '03 VW. All racked up over 100K, and two got close to 200K, and I have never replaced a clutch.
I agree it has a lot to do with the driving style and skill of the owner. People who hold themselves in place on hills and at stoplights with the clutch wear them out in 30K.
My 93 Toyota pickup with 140,000 miles still has the original clutch with plenty of friction material left on it. My only problem is the pressure plate has gotten week and it slips occasionally when at freeway speeds and I punch the gas. I have a replacement clutch, pressure plate and throw out bearing, I just need the incentive to spend a day changing it.
The only manual transmission that I’ve owned crapped out at about 100,000 miles. But I never tried to treat the clutch with any respect. Besides it was only a few hundred bucks to have it repaired,
I’ve never needed to replace the clutch in any car I have owed. That would include a 1983 Toyota Celica (145,000 miles) and a 1990 Honda Accord (155,000) miles. No sign the clutch was ever going bad with either of those cars.
Thanks for the help. I didn’t think it was all that strange, though the only other standard car I’ve owned was owned by my father-in-law and everyone drove that and it died at 100k. It’s good to know that this car should be perfect for my brother-in-law.
What Gary T said. I had a clutch fail a few months ago. It was great, though 230K miles old. I subjected it to a ton of abuse in about three minutes and it blew up.
It was actually amusing, when we pulled the tranny off to take a look at it. The pressure plate looked perfectly fine, and so we were worried something else had gone wrong. Until we pulled off the plate, and the friction plate of the clutch disintegrated in a rain of pieces.
There’s a place I drive by on my way to work that guarantees 150k on their rebuilt ones. From that I surmise that more that that on an original is not an unreasonbale expectation.
The engine on my '93 Plymouth Sundance died around 130k. We replaced the (original) clutch since we had everything apart, but it could have easily lasted at least until the transmission died 35k miles later.
You do it by keeping your foot on the gas while holding the clutch in that “just barely engaged” zone. The result is that the little bit of forward impetus from the engine and the pull downhill balance each other out and hold you basically still.
The result is also a tremendous amount of wear on your clutch.
It’s actually a wonderful way to hone your clutch skills. Too bad it’s so bad for the car
It’s not tough when often folks are driving 100miles (or more) round trip to work. Add on a few 100+ mile trips (each way) for recreation (it’d be less than 2 hours by car in most cases), and it’s easy to get that sort of mileage.
When I was using my car for business, and trecking about from client to client, 40-50K miles wouldn’t have been unreasonable for a years use.
