Andre

The cluth on my 300zx lasted 75k and i drove the car hard, the clutch on my cousins porsche lasted 40k. What should a stook clutch last?

Luis

Mine was replaced at 18,000 miles, and I would say it had half of its useful life still to go. It slept twice on me.

I do not ride the clutch and though I shift a lot, half of those miles were freeway cruising in 6th. So I'd say that longevity is not this clutch's strong point.

Your milage WILL vary. From 0 to 100,000 miles everything is possible.

WhiteS2k

I have a '93 Honda Accord with more than 120K miles on it still with the original clutch. It is on the second set of Michelin tires, the OEM tires were replaced at 70K miles. My theory is that as long as you don't stop or shift, the clutch, brakes, and tires should last a lot longer :-).

Sunchild

Query: does rev matching prolong the life of a clutch, or does it generally cause more damaging slippage (caused by over-revving rather than under-revving at the time of clutch engagement). I guess it depends on the driver.

Tox

I don't think of a clutch as a "consumable" like brakes or tires. Of all the, lessee, six cars I've bought new and thoroughly used up (meaning at least 100K miles and usually more), I've never had to replace a clutch. And not on the cars I bought used, either (although I did replace two on general principles when I had the engines out anyway). So I won't take it kindly if I have to replace the S2000's clutch.

IMO, rev matching (even sloppy rev matching) should extend the life of the clutch. Looking at it intuitively, when you downshift without matching revs you can feel a big lurch as the car and engine come to terms with each other. All that force is being transmitted through the clutch, which has to be slipping until things match up.

On the other hand, if you overrev while trying to match on a downshift the lurch is minimal. I think the difference between missing high and not matching at all is that when you overrev and then engage the clutch, the mass of the car is slowing the engine down. Since you're off the gas by this time, compression was slowing the engine down anyway, just not quite so quickly. This takes much less force (and therefore burns less clutch) than speeding the engine up (againist compression) with the car's mass.

Make sense?

Hootsama

Tom, your points make sense, but I remember a friend telling me way back when that limited use of downshifts with UN-matched revs (engine braking) actually helps the clutch plate by applying reverse resistance... Can this be?