I have a 2001 Honda Accord SE (2litre) which has 107,000 miles on the clock. As far as a I know it's still on the original clutch. (I bought the car second hand a few years ago when it had around 65,000 mls).
I'm not sure, but I suspect that 100,000+ miles on a clutch is better than one can reasonably expect, so I'm wondering whether I should go for pre-emptive replacement this year. What do you think? Or could the current one go on for a lot longer?
Clutch wear depends so much on driving style and usage that it's more or less pointless to try and predict a service life. From under 50k miles to over 200k miles are equally possible. Wear only takes place during gear changes or starting from rest. A car that does mainly motorway miles will have almost zero clutch wear compared to one that does a lot of town driving. Also the ability of the driver to match rpm during gear changes, not apply power until the clutch is fully engaged again and not slip the clutch unduly from rest will have a big impact.
On upchanges the rpm should drop by the right amount to match engine speed to road speed in the new gear which you can see by watching the revcounter as the clutch is engaged again. On downchanges you can double declutch and blip the throttle ala days before synchromesh. I doubt many people bother to nowadays though.
Put the car in a high gear with the handbrake on and let the clutch out slowly with plenty of throttle. If it doesn't slip and if the pedal engages at a normal point i.e. not too close to the floor then it's fine.
A few years ago there was some dratted woman living across the road who used to wake me up by setting off each morning in her little hatchback doing about 4000 rpm with the clutch only partly engaged. You could hear her all the way up the street because the engine was screaming. She'd never learned how to engage the clutch fully from rest without stalling the car. I imagine her clutch life was measurable in hours of use rather than tens of thousands of miles.
one of my customers (now dead) had a big fear of stalling, he also needed to use the Dartford tunnel which regularly had hold ups actually in the tunnel, so he slipped the clutch like mad, his clutch HAD to be replaced every year due to extreme wear, although the car only did about 10,000 miles a year !
Don't bother. I've always found clutches on the way out give plenty of warning (slipping on uphill roads in a high gear etc) and none have ever failed totally and left me stranded. Have always squeezed at least 1000 miles out of a slipping clutch before getting it replaced :-)
75k for a clutch is a reasonable lifetime. Don't think I've every had one fail before then. I think my old BMW clutch must be getting on for 120k miles now. I thought about replacing it a few years ago, but figured I'd wait until it packed up. Still waiting :-)
Probably died from inhaling all the fumes from burning the clutch out. I was once behind a motor with a slipping clutch revving the nuts off trying to get up a steep hill. I had to shut off all the air vents as the smell was too bad.
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