My clutch is having issues...
...actually, it's always been a little spotty, since the my car's power is right at the limit for the clutch. Even when it was in good condition it was very easy to smoke if you weren't careful. But I always considered that a good thing because it meant the clutch was the point of failure before the tranny.
Anyway, I decided to test out the clutch a bit. Here's what I did.
- Drove down an empty street at about 40mph.
- Push the clutch in.
- Switch off the ignition to kill the motor.
- Give the motor time to stop spinning.
- Switch the ignition back to "on".
- W/o letting the clutch out, the motor immediately picked back up running at idle speed!
What this tells me is that I'm never completely disengaging my clutch. So every time I'm idling w/ the clutch in, I'm wearing the thing! And every shift requires that the synchros grip harder than the grip of the clutch, meaning I'm wearing my synchros prematurely as well!
Of course, when I have to stop for any extended period of time, I shift to neutral and step off the clutch... but still, shouldn't I be able to completely disengage the tranny via the clutch pedal? Shouldn't turing the car back on in the test above result in a dead motor until I let the clutch out a bit?
Since I'm planning on a 6MT in the car with a new clutch/flywheel I'm not too concerned. However, I'm planning on swapping this clutch/flywheel into the SVX along with the 5MT. Now I'm thinking I'm going to need to resurface the flywheel and probable replace the pucks in the clutch when I do that swap.
