It's not just our clutches !!
 

Friend had a '60 plate Citroen C3 in his garage today, customer complaining that it had lost the clutch pedal overnight. Car had done 89,000 miles.

On inspection, fluid was leaking badly out of the plastic slave.....new one fitted, bled and pressure restored.

Fortunately, the slave on those is external, so an easy job compared to the 75/ZT. But at least we know it's not just ours that fail prematurely :duh:

These days I don’t see 90000 as premature. I think if your getting that out of the clutch hydraulics you’ve done well. Don’t forget manufacturers still consider 100000 as a lifetime for their cars.

Premature is failing after a couple of years or limited mileage like the “quality” parts currently being supplied. If I was confident a clutch would last that long when replaced on a 75 I wouldn’t be so reluctant to buy a manual. I would guess that c3 has spent a good deal of its 89k town driving too...

I'd like to praise the diesel clutch on our cars. Sure, I've had them fail, but not regularly, maybe failure is mainly due to cheap parts and poor fitting. This is the thing, we only see the problems with our own cars.

Yes, I guess that both of the comments above are very fair points. Years ago when things like bodywork, paint, interior and general build deteriorated much more quickly (cars became 'tatty', faster), I suppose we accepted failure of such items at lower mileages as it was on a par with the rest of the car.

Nowadays, however, a well looked after 20 year old 75 with 200,000 on the clock can still look like it's just driven out of the showroom, so any mechanical failure gets complained about.

I have a feeling my current diesel Tourer is still on it's original clutch at 150,000 miles - is there any way to check this without removing the gearbox ? :shrug:

And does anyone know if the clutch springs are stiffer on the 75/ZT diesel, compared to the petrol models ?? (Hence more load on the hydraulics & seals) :shrug:

The C3 was a diesel, not sure if that may have made a difference....

Banana still has her original clutch fitted and is on 211,400 miles.

A large part of clutch lifespan is down to the style of driving - I've just bought another older BMW for 'research' purposes and it has 210,000 miles on the clock - yet the clutch wear figures for the automatic gearbox are better than my other car with the same gearbox and just 90,000 miles.

I never believe sellers when they proclaim the car 'has spent its whole life on the M6' - but it looks like this was actually true! :D

My old 75 had 190,000 miles on the original clutch and hydraulics, and aside from being a little heavy was perfectly fine too :)

I've just bought another older BMW for 'research' purposes and it has 210,000 miles on the clock - yet the clutch wear figures for the automatic gearbox are better than my other car with the same gearbox and just 90,000 miles.

I've also bought a high mileage BMW - how do you get clutch wear figures?
Thanks
Geoff

Strip the driven plate out and measure the thickness. :}


Nothing wrong with the clutches on our cars but the slave cylinders are woeful - cheap tat engineered down to a price. :getmecoat:


Wouldn't be a problem as the OP stated if they left them external to the gearbox like on the Citroen, as it takes all of 10 minutes to change them.


Did a clutch on an Astra a few years back and the quality of the replacement was noticeable compared to our cars.

I put a new slave on my Discovery 2 a few years back, when the old one just didn't feel right after fitting a clutch.

Externally mounted and good, old fashioned metal engineering with plenty of space around it, you could probably swap one at the roadside if you really needed to !

I did wonder then, if a 75 could be modified to something similar ? I think the fabrication of a pivot point inside the bellhousing could be the trickiest bit. Arm and cylinder could come from another car, and a bit of fabricated pipework....:shrug:

Paul, relax, just drive them, we don't fret over such things in Debun.