Clutch wear anxiety - how high does your clutch grab?

[baconbits]

All, I'm hoping this is just paranoia or anxiety and I'm worry about nothing.

 

Stage Bro 5mt, Cobb intake, 3" turboback, etc etc. Stock turbo and Cobb OTS tune. 80% city driving for me, 8 mile commute to work, yadda yadda yadda.

 

Roughly three years ago, I replaced my clutch with a ClutchMasters FX250. Having never driven a manual with an upgraded clutch, I struggled to get used to it and probably used too many revs to have a smooth engagement. 26,015 miles later, it was slipping on aggressive 5-4 downshifts on the highway to pass people. I never launched it, no racing, nothing. Just wanted something that could handle a VF52 and pro tune but that never happened.

 

Cue up a Comp Clutch stage 2 with their lightweight flywheel. This was installed this past March/April, and currently has just 6,500 miles on it. When installed, it was without exaggeration, grabbing 1/8 inch off the floor. Cue many stalls because I wasn't used to such an aggressive engagement, a lightweight flywheel, or that spot in the pedal (muscle memory). I tried to engage it just higher than idle RPM but usually it's a bit higher just as a muscle memory thing... blip to 2000 and as it falls, start releasing the pedal around and engage it around 1200-1400 and it fully engages and dips to 1000... If I really work at it, I could engage it at 800rpm warm idle but that doesn't seem right either and is dreadfully slow and I'm sure annoying for motorists behind me

 

Now, and probably as of the past month or two, I've been having this constant worry that my clutch is now almost worn again, as it's grabbing very high (it seems) in the pedal. I've only slipped it twice to the point of smelling it, and those were both during break in which could have been normal.

 

Now onto the question... how high do your clutches grab? I have a return spring installed on mine because of the TOB squeak, and it's not too strong. I've always had this 1/2" or so of mushy pedal like I have a leaking brake line, then it's probably another 1/2" or so of resistance as I'm pushing on the pressure plate spring, and then it fully disengages. Then I have about 2" of travel before it hits the floor. Is this how everyone's clutch is or do yours grab much closer to the floor? Do yours have such short resistance/engagement windows or is it just me? Worn/leaking/bad slave or master cylinder? None of mine have fluid leaks anywhere externally which I think would have to happen for them to be bad. I could try bleeding it again, I suppose.

[magnusonsubie]

I've got the same Comp Clutch stage 2 with lightweight fw and my clutch engages about halfway out on the pedal. The window of engagment is very small though and I've only ever slipped it on hills on accident but I haven't found much of a window to be able to slip it in.

 

Edit: I'm at about 26k miles on mine.

[ScottFW]

CM FX300 w/ OEM WRX FW and about 60K on this setup. 20% stop & go traffic, 80% highway cruising. It's grabbing a bit higher up off the floor than it did new, but not worryingly so. Also installed mine with plans to be pushing more power that haven't materialized quite yet.

 

Clutch wear rate depends on how much you slip it. Aggressive clutches and lightweight FWs suck for DD because their nature is to not engage as smoothly as stock, and the more you try to engage it smoothly, the more you're slipping the clutch and the more wear it causes. Better to let it grab a bit and "launch" (not really) a teensy bit harder IMO.

 

Worn/leaking/bad slave or master cylinder? None of mine have fluid leaks anywhere externally which I think would have to happen for them to be bad. I could try bleeding it again, I suppose.

Tired seals can let some hydraulic fluid bypass them without creating a big obvious external leak. If the shifter resists moving into 1st gear at a stop with one press on the clutch pedal, but pumping the clutch pedal 2 or 3 times lets the shifter slide in like butter, then I'd suspect a tired master or slave cylinder. On "most" cars the slave fails first, and it's also the easiest & cheapest to replace. I'm somewhat surprised my LGT still has the original slave cyl with almost 160K miles. My other vehicles have shat their clutch hydraulics much earlier than that.

[baconbits]

127k here and other than clutches, nothing has really shat the bed.

 

I've been trying more dump and less slip lately but getting that *just* right rpm where it doesn't stall is tough with a lightweight flywheel like you said. I won't be getting another lightweight wheel... Good thing I saved my WRX singelmass and can resurface it for next time.

[Holla]

You're probably just paranoid. As long as it still grabs good I wouldn't worry about it too much. When I got my oem Exedy 6MT clutch last fall it grabbed right on the floor. The pressure was so light on it I needed to put my toe under the pedal to bring it back up. 9k later it grabs pretty high and the pedal feels normal. I thought the same thing about it grabbing high but it grabs just fine and doesn't slip so I'm not going to worry about it.

[serx7]

After the stock disc in my swapped Spec B 6MT puked about a month or so ago, I had a Competition Clutch Stage 2 installed. Like OP, when new it started to bite as the clutch pedal was just off the floor, and the engagement window was VERY narrow. I did stall it once but the upgraded clutch in my 1st car from 1991 was very much like this, so after a day or 3 the old old muscle memory kicked in and I more or less stopped being affected by it. I was able to gently launch it from ~1200 rpm w/o much trouble consistently.

 

Right around 500 mi I needed to bring the car to the shop for a smoke test 2nd opinion and some other diag, and the guy who was trying to roll the car onto the lift's ramps was having trouble, a fair amt of revs and one of the other guys in the shop started yelling at him to abort so that someone else could roll it up w/o so much trouble. The clutch felt kinda soft in comparison after that. Not really soft, but more like the stock clutch it replaced. I think that guy having trouble getting the car on the lift had something to do w/ it, but I've read that things soften up a bit right around the 500 mi mark anyway. I wasn't too happy about it but TBH it did make the car a bit easier to drive in town smoothly.

 

Now, w/ >1500 mi on the clutch, it engages perhaps a little higher off the floor vs when brand new. The old stock clutch would start to engage about 1/3 of the way off the floor with about 1.5"-2" of 'modulation' distance to fully engaged. The Competition Clutches Stage 2 bites somewhere b/n its original right-off-the-floor point and the old stock clutch's 1/3 of the way off the floor, the window b/n initial bite and fully engaged is still noticeably narrower than w/ the stock clutch but I don't really notice it anymore. It seems to be holding fine though. VF52 w/ supporting upgrades, 303 whp/339 wtq and it holds aggressive 1-2 and 2-3 upshifts w/o any problems.

[Max Capacity]

The Spec 2+ that was installed March 2015 in my 05 wagon with a OEM smfw grabs and feels pretty close to the stock clutch in my 09 Spec B.

 

This is the 3rd Spec clutch in the car, the 2nd was a Spec 2, it again felt like the stock clutch but only lasted 50,000 miles at the current power levels.

 

This Spec 2+ will at times make the howl when engaging first gear, but not all the time. The first Spec 2+ would do the same thing form time to time. That howl is normal because of the clutch material, does not effect anything.