Garage price

How on earth did you wear out the clutch in 54k miles?

Many of my cars have done significantly higher mileage, and I've never worn out a clutch. But then, I've never owned a Nissan Micra ...

In 1971 I had to rebuild the gearbox on an 850cc minivan so I replaced the clutch plate while I had it apart - I thought it prudent. This minivan had been used by a body repair garage to take their scrap metal to the dump, so it had seen some hard use.

From when he kept whacking Mrs Pound round the head with the pressure plate.

Sounds to me like the garage saw one coming.

I didn't, he did. Possibly he was riding the clutch.

But then, I've never owned a Nissan Micra ...

My post was about the price.

Very good.

Care to explain that?

The price was very reasonable, especially considering the above and beyond nature of the whole thing.

Thank you Mr C for a sensible reply as to the price. That was the point of my post. Graham failed to see that very difficult point. Maybe I did not spell it out for him?

Like others I find it very hard to believe, unless you really are a shit driver, that the clutch should go after just 54k.

I suspect the Micra has a clutch cable and if so that is what is likely to have gone, clutched don't usually just 'go' they wear away slowly so you get plenty of warning. £319 is taking the piss out of someone they saw coming. Well under £100 should have done it.

Which "others"? Please tell us, come along, you can do this. BTW, I've been driving for 46 years and am not a shit driver. If you actually read my post you would have seen that I was not the owner/driver of the car. I know that this sort of thing is difficult for you ...

Are you a cyclist?

I think you will find that Mr C was pulling your plonker (if you have one).

[snip]

I'm not quibbling with the price and standard of service if indeed the clutch had actually failed rather than (as another Graham suggested, the cable simply needed adjustment).

You didn't say what mileage had elapsed between your sellling the car and your buyer suffering the failed clutch; but it seems reasonable that your (or somebody in your family) were the driver for the vast majority of the 54k miles. It is of course possible that the buyer had abused the clutch - but it does not seem very likely.

I was more concerned to learn whether 54k miles was typical for a Nissan Micra to need a new clutch. I do understand that that for its age it had not covered many miles (around 4,500 per year) so that might imply short journeys and town usage. But even so, seems to be a surprising rate of wear.

Graham J for one

'A few months back I sold our 2005 Nissan Micra with 54k on the clock'

Are you pissed?

How much did you get for the car? I did not get much more than that for my old 2003 VW Passat with twice that mileage but not much more MOT.

£319 for a replacement clutch on many small front wheel drive cars is about normal. If it was just a clutch cable, then it is stupidly high.

I have known customers wear out their clutch inside one year and 2000 miles.

+1

But surely not too many! :-)

Certainly it is not common, although one had a clutch a year for several years till I persuaded him to get an auto. He was a very poor driver and revved it like mad when parking, he also travelled through the Dartford tunnel every day when it would often stop completely and was frightened of stalling in the tunnel.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. The parts must be around a ton?

My late father-in-law had several clutches fitted to his RWD escort in the time from when I started going out with my OH and him dying, which was only a few years. He used to ride the clutch a lot.

Clutch life is very hard to estimate: as Mr C says a poor driver could see one off in hundreds or few thousands of miles, but a sympathetically driven car without much stop start could see well over 100K.

I saw the guy last night and asked what symptoms the failed clutch showed. He said the pedal felt okay, he just could not get any gears. So, not the cable then.

On a Mexico job, our driver José had a small Japanese 7-seater van/bus, which he had owned from new. It's odometer had reached 999,999 km and then stopped. I asked José once how many clutches the van had had replaced, and he replied that it was now on its third clutch, and the second had only failed when he lent his brother the van to move house.

that is often the symptoms when the clutch plate finally loses one side of the friction material.