29k and I need a new clutchplate?

If you are familiar with standard transmissions and not riding the clutch, it sounds like there must be some other defect (springs not exerting proper force or something). My 95 SE (purchased May 94) is an earlier generation, but it has been through parking lot slaloms, high speed autocross, and even a few days at the dragstrip, over 100,000 miles and has never needed service (all original).

Did you buy that car new or used?

You're wasting your time and unless it has oil leaking onto it, it's doubtful it's a defect. Too many variables in drivers to ever rule out the driver as the problem with a worn out clutch. I've seen LOTS of people who claim "I KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A CLUTCH!!!" but when you ride with them, they don't. What kills most clutches is using it to hold the car on a hill (rocking back and forth) or even just "staging" the car with the clutch waiting for an opening in traffic and driving them "smooth" i.e. slipping it into each gear. The more power the car has, the more this second one roasts the clutch. I'd suggest letting one of the mechanics or the service writer ride with you and critique your clutch operation to make sure you really do know how to drive a clutch, if your ego can stand it..

Of course, that assumes the said witness knows how to drive manual well - a big assumption.

Dave

New, lease

Oh OH........It looks like I'm guilty as charged, I recently started working longer hours so I go to a different train station that has more trains at night. This station has a garage with an underground exit that goes up a steep hill to exit. There is usually a car in front of me so I 'balance' the car on the clutch but just adding enough first gear power to keep it from slipping backwards. My bad, but still, it's only been 2 weeks. Looks like an expensive leason on my part.

Wow, someone on USENET with integrity! Getting harder and harder to find people who will publicly admit fault. :)

Publicly admitting fault is a lot tougher than writing big checks! Thanks, I'm old, I had an email address 2 years before there was a WWW, and yes, those are FORTRAN punch cards I use as bookmarks (non no , not those bookmarks, I mean the ones to mark my places in books). Hold off on the integrity thing though, I'm still going to try and convince Nisssan that 29k is a short shelf life for a clutch. Particularly when the owners manual does not identify my behaviour as potentially damaging. I will, however, be honest with them.

Did you mean 20 years? I've had email for at least 20 years before the web was around. Maybe I'm just a WHOLE LOT older than you? :-)

-jim

More likely than the person who is driving it admitting they can't.

I've been down this road. Had a guy who would eat a clutch about every 20K swearing at the car, saying the parts were bad etc. I went to pick him up when we were finished replacing his 3rd clutch in 60K and handed him the keys to drive us back. First light he sat there on a hill holding the car with the clutch, slipping it for at least 2-3 minutes after he had claimed he never does this. Bad habits are hard to break and some people don't even realize they are doing it.

Yep that will QUICKLY roast a clutch..

Well, not to date myself too much, but I still remember the long nights in the Comp Sci department waiting for a card punch machine to free up, then waiting hours to have my program run, only to find I made a stupid syntax error. Duhoo! "Kids" have it SOOOO easy today. :)

A clutch is not a brake. But I use to like the Hill-Holder (pioneered by Studebaker) that Subaru had (not sure if they still do). You could step on the brake, push in the clutch, and a ball check would keep the brake on until you released the clutch. This allowed you to move your foot from brake to gas without rolling backwards.

Was it a Shugart? Remember when they were "hard sectored"? I used to fix those things. I'm 47 and have been in the computer business since 1977. My first job was fixing "high speed" paper tape readers and ASR33 teletypes. I used to love fixing those old "wash tub" 300MB CDC drives. Ah, the good ole days!

I remember using a "Wang" system back in the early 70's that recorded data on either paper tapes or encoded on audio tapes. No monitor, output was via a daisy wheel printer/keyboard.

I was going to keep quiet on the clutch stuff but then Shugart came up.

Worked there from '77 to '82. When I joined, Shugart Associates (which had just been acquired by Xerox) wasn't shipping any hard drives, just 5 1/4 inch and 8 inch single sided floppy drives. Later, the the ability to write (and read) from the other side was added. Sometimes reliably, other times no so. :) Need I mention that I'm really old?

Al Shugart had already left when I joined in '77. Later, he would found Seagate (initially "Shugart Technology") along with some other ex-Shugies inclining Finis Conner. I believe the first hard disk we sold was the SA-4000 series (a 4004, I think) and it was a 14 inch hard disk. The SA-1000 came along and was an 8 inch affair. Neither suffered from the stigma of low cost or lack of road hugging weight.

On the clutch topic (having owned a 89 Max that my niece still drives, and having 96 currently), my sense for both cars is that the clutch is not a strong point and hence warrants minimizing any abuse (and bad habits) if one wants it to do its job for an extended period. Probably not the car I'd use for a High School Driving Instruction class.

On that note, I'd mention that cars used for that purpose routinely (at least when I worked in a high school) would go through clutches in 15-20K miles. Lots of practice at starting on hills etc. Takes its toll.

Cheers,