Clutch Life

[Uwon]

'06 C2S. Just flushed/bled brakes and clutch. Clutch pedal still engages at about. 2" from the floor. Is it on the way out?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Johan

[JFP in PA]

'06 C2S. Just flushed/bled brakes and clutch. Clutch pedal still engages at about. 2" from the floor. Is it on the way out?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Johan

 

How many miles?  Track time?

[Uwon]

JFP, car has 75k highway only miles, hardly any city driving, never tracked.

Johan

[JFP in PA]

JFP, car has 75k highway only miles, hardly any city driving, never tracked.

Johan

 

You could be at the edge of it going off.  Clutch wear is always hard to estimate as it is related to driving style.

 

Keep an eye on it, if the pedal starts feeling heavy, or you start seeing slippage, get it looked at.  Big issue here is you do not want to kill the dual mass flywheel.

[Uwon]

JFP, thanks for your reply. I have experienced slippage and significant change in pedal travel with my other cars but never a harder pedal. Out of interest, would you be able to explain why the pedal gets harder as the clutch approaches its end of life.

Thanks in advance.

Johan

[JFP in PA]

JFP, thanks for your reply. I have experienced slippage and significant change in pedal travel with my other cars but never a harder pedal. Out of interest, would you be able to explain why the pedal gets harder as the clutch approaches its end of life.

Thanks in advance.

Johan

 

Wear on the pressure plate finger pivots and a decrease in the disc thickness lead to a harder pedal.

[Uwon]

Never heard if it before but I now understand the issue. Sounds like the wear is associated at least in part to the number of times the clutch is depressed. Interesting that in that  I drove my 3.4 turbo converted Carrera over 250K miles including about 10-15 track days per year over a 13 year span, and I replaced the complete clutch once and only re-faced the disk a couple of times. 

Always enjoy reading your valued analysis and advise.

Cheers,

Johan

[JFP in PA]

Clutch wear comes from a variety of factors; driving style, driving environment, abuse level, and the components themselves (which are not all the same).  We have customers with matching cars, one of which goes through a clutch in about 40K miles, the other just had his IMS done at 90K and his clutch looked like it had miles to go.  Couple of months back, we had an early Boxster in with an RMS oil leak at 237K, except for the oil all over everything, the clutch looked pretty good.  We replaced it anyway due to the oil, but some of them just seem to hang on forever.

[Edgy01]

I used to routinely go past 100,000 miles on 911 clutches but my 997S pressure plate prematurely failed around 65,000 miles.  Of course, Porsche won't stand behind it.  Just a bad pressure plate.  It happens more than you know.  So, parts are a big factor.

 

dan