in general, do clutches on high powered cars wear faster?

[BlahBlahYouToo]

been driving 4 bangers my whole life and am thinking about moving up to a car with more than 150 ft lb of torque.
something like a 370z or V8 camaro.

i drive very conservatively. no hard launches, always rev match the downshift, double clutch into 1st, etc. haven't had to change a clutch in 3 cars, almost 200k miles of driving.

but i'm leaning towards buying used, and with not knowing how the previous driver drove, and with the cost of replacing a clutch these days, it's a concern.

common physics suggests that with more torque, the clutch will wear faster than on 4cyl cars. but are they compensated with stronger clutches that can take the additional power?

 

[melchoir]

They most definitely have stronger clutches to handle the additional power.
You can easily get 100k out of a stock clutch if you don't abuse it or go too far over stock power. (This applies to the Camaro)

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: BlahBlahYouToo
common physics suggests that with more torque, the clutch will wear faster than on 4cyl cars.

A clutch only wears when it is slipping. As long as the pressure plate has sufficient clamping force to prevent clutch slip when engaged, there's no reason that the clutch would wear any faster.

In fact, with proper driving habits the clutch in high-torque cars can last longer than the clutches in econoboxes because you do not need to slip the clutch as much when pulling away in first gear. It's not terribly uncommon to see older pickups with 200,000 miles on the original clutch.

Bottom line: Barring a design defect in a specific application, someone who knows how to drive a stick properly should be able to get at least 100,000 miles out of a clutch and is quite likely to get 150,000 miles or more.

ZV

 

[StageLeft]

Bit of a luck of the draw thing with a used car. I've had good luck with my used manuals, but I know of a guy who burned a clutch out on a corolla in about 30k miles. Some people suck the bee's ass at driving a stick. They slip it like mad when accelerating and hill-hold. My wife was in the car this weekend with somebody who does not rev-match but rather goes high on revs every single gear before releasing the clutch, so the car lurches a little bit every gear change. You get a used car like that and the clutch will be badly worn. I think this is a minority of cases, though; most people don't suck hugely on driving.

 

[SickBeast]

They say there are two tricks to make a clutch last longer:

1. Never hold the clutch down at at red light or whatever. Only put the clutch down when you need to shift.

2. Always put the clutch ALL the way DOWN to the floor when you shift.

 

[Dman877]

Putting the clutch in will not wear it at all. Whoever told you that is all kinds of fail.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Dman877
Putting the clutch in will not wear it at all. Whoever told you that is all kinds of fail.

It was my uncle who is a mechanic. He is not any kind of "fail". He said that the clutch is like a spring, and if you hold it in too much, it loses its elasticity. Perhaps someone else here can confirm it.

 

[zerocool84]

I have the stock clutch in my modded SRT-4. It's has a lot of torque but I granny it and have 40k on the stock clutch and don't see it going bad any time soon.

 

[Apex]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: Dman877
Putting the clutch in will not wear it at all. Whoever told you that is all kinds of fail.

It was my uncle who is a mechanic. He is not any kind of "fail". He said that the clutch is like a spring, and if you hold it in too much, it loses its elasticity. Perhaps someone else here can confirm it.

You're both right.

Pushing it in will not cause it to wear. However, pusing it in will cause the pressure plate to experience metal fatigue.

This being said, pressure plate failure doesn't tend to cause the death of a clutch nearly as much as wear tends to (on most applications).

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: Dman877
Putting the clutch in will not wear it at all. Whoever told you that is all kinds of fail.

it'll wear out the pressure fingers and release bearing though.

 

[KentState]

Keeping the clutch pedal pushed in wears the throwout bearing.

To the OP, I had about 65k when I turned my GTO in and the clutch didn't have any problems up to that point. I'm sure 100k would have been easy to reach.