I’ve done this to get my car and motorcycle to start when the battery is dead.
I was just wondering – I assume doing this does put additional wear on the transmission. Of course, doing it once or twice every couple of years isn’t going to make a huge difference, but does it cause more wear on the transmission? Or is my assumption wrong?
Thanks!
I think the way the car moves when the clutch engages - that is, how vigorous a disturbance this creates for the speed and angle of the car - is a perfectly good measure of how much wear and tear it causes. If your shifts are usually that violent, then it’s just like another shift.
By “popping” the clutch, do you imply you let it out suddenly? Or is this just an expression for getting the car rolling and then engaging the engine to start it? Unless you’re barely moving fast enough to turn the engine over, there’s probably no reason to engage it suddenly when starting it. For instance, if you’re coasting down a long hill and gradually engage the engine, so that passengers might not even notice it, you’ll still start it.
Less wear than revving the engine and popping the clutch to peel out! I wouldn’t be concerned about it. Maybe if I had to do it five times a day, but then my main concern would be finding someone to push. 
Speaking from experience here, since when I was in college I had a car with a bad starter and no money to replace it for months. You will burn out your clutch if you pop-start your car that way for a while. If I remember right, it took about 4–6 months of doing this several times a week to wear out the clutch to the point where it needed to be replaced. If I’d had to drive every day it would have gone out sooner, but I lived walking distance from school.
What wears clutches is slipping them at high rpm when starting out. If you starter was dead, you might have been doing that to make sure you didn’t stall the engine in traffic.
My driveway is steeply sloped, I normally bump start my car when I leave. The car is 22 years old, but I’ve only lived in the house for 19 years. I replaced the clutch when I had the engine out with 130,000 miles on it, it still had some life left in it. The replacement clutch is at ~218,000 miles and still holding up.
Another data point: Starters, even kick starters, are normally removed from racing motorcycles to save weight. Bump starting is the only option for getting them running. While many bikes have wet clutches, most BMW’s and Motoguzzis, and some Ducatis have dry clutches like cars. They hold up fine.
Nah, all should be fine. There will be less stress on everything if you roll start your car/bike in top gear instead of first (assuming you have enough speed to do so). Also, don’t pop the clutch and leave it out. You’re better of popping the clutch out and immediately putting it back in. That little “touch” will probably be enough to start the engine if it is otherwise in good shape. I use to do this all the time back in the 80’s with my Ford Escort (lived in a hilly area at the time).
I think it depends on how you do it, ie, which gear you’re “popping” from. You want to use a higher gear than first when pop-starting a manual car.
Yeah, I know how to pop-start a car. I was damn poor when I was younger and had to deal with junker cars all the time since I could never get enough money together to get a decent one. I’ve done a lot of the repairs on the POSs myself whenever I could too. I always started it in second, not first.
Obviously it’s not like the car was new to begin with. It was a piece of crap when I got it and got worse over time. The clutch was worn from use already (the car was at least 8 years old at that point) I put more strain on it from having to start the car like that every single time I used it, and considering where I lived I had to do a lot of highway driving with it too. After the clutch got worn enough that it was starting to slip, the fall was inevitable. I could tell it was going out a month or so before it finally did, but couldn’t do anything about it.
WAG but if you have a dual-mass flywheel I imagine that you will destroy that before the clutch goes.