JW911

Many many years ago I taught my brother to drive a manual transmission. He stalled and slipped and ground the gears and it was awful. This went on for hours. And then it dawned on me. I spent the next 10 minutes explaining to him how a motor and transmission interacted and what the clutch did, how it worked, why he was pushing the pedal, etc. etc. Once I did this and he really understood this, he almost immediately started to clutch and slip perfectly. I recommend this to anyone learing to drive a stick. Really enables the driver to know when to gas, when to let up on the clutch, when to shift, etc.

Drive the car and if it seems fine just keep driving.

CharlieJr

JW -

I wish I could explain all of that!

I was "forced" to learn myself, a LONG time ago, and it happened to be in the Austrian Alps. I had to drive, the car had a stick, and off I went. I had that thing bucking and grinding horribly (especially going up those steep hills from a stop), but eventually figured something out.

Since then, I've had a number of stick shift cars, so I think I do it alright - - but I guess I don't really know. I managed to put 75k on a car with one clutch (a Celica), but don't really do heal-toe very well.

My son was coming off the clutch way too fast, so I told him to let off the clutch a little smoother (and feel the friction engage), but then it got a little over-cooked (rather quickly I thought).

I just bought this car a few days ago, to teach my son how to drive (he's got a permit) and do it with a stick. I've been shopping for a 911 for a while now for myself, but I think this just convinced me to hold off until I can do PDE or something similar, to make sure I really know what I"m doing!

Thanks all!

rfedele

Don't be ridiculous! You'll be fine and your worst case scenario is you pay for a new clutch on the 911. Can't be more than $3-4K, I assume? Does anyone know?

dstrimbu

The 911 clutch is pretty awesome, in my opinion. You should have no problems. There is certainly no need to slip it - in fact, it won't take much slipping.

There's a lot of rubber on the ground. In a tire / clutch battle, the tires will win... and the clutch will spin. This is not conducive to clutch plate life.

I've found that, in normal driving, I can let the 911 clutch out at idle and apply throttle just as it engages. I usually hook up smoothly between idle and 1k on the tach, and move away smartly. As soon as it's out, you can mash the throttle to your heart's content on dry pavement.

There's no need to slip it, and no need to drop it. Use the 911 clutch like a "switch" - on or off - and you'll get long life...

Anything over 2.5-3k RPMs, and you'll get a very pungent smell from the 911 clutch. Throw $100 in Dan's "tip jar" when that happens.

Don't shy away from the car bc of this. It's a very easy manual trans to pilot, even in traffic...

-don

CharlieJr

Okay, Don - I hate to ask such a naive question but what is clutch "slipping".

Dr 997

You said it. Check this out!

https://rennlist.com/forums/997-forum/300152-a-sad-ending-lesson-learned.html

Just goes to show you that bad driving CAN cause premature clutch failure!

Jimmy

P.s. in case you're interested, I got the previous owner to pay for a new clutch... Whew, glad I got that over with. Now, I can just concentrate on driving.

Edgy01

I first drove my sister's Austin America which bears no resemblance to a real car and then finally got my first Porsche, a 1.7 litre 914. They later said that it is quite likely that I got such poor clutch service life because of the limited power of the car,--and you sacrifice your clutch a little to get going.

With any 911 you have always had plenty of power. The secret for me was to see what's going on inside the pressure plate/clutch surface and flywheel area. Once I saw how the pressure of a pressure plate, acting upon the two-sided clutch material and then onto the flywheel, I got the idea of what I was doing wrong.

The secret of course is to take it really easy with the gas. You want to only give it enough gas to keep from stalling the engine and slowly let out the clutch,--the key is to minimize the slip opportunities. Popping the clutch is never good either, so you need to be easy on both the gas and the clutch.

When I traded in my first new 911 it had over 111,000 miles on the engine and the engine needed to be rebuilt (mag. cases) but they put the original clutch back in as it was fine. My next 911 was the same way,--althought I wound up putting a Carrera RSR pressure plate in there to handle the additional (non-stock) horsepower.

It's a lot like riding a bicycle when you finally break the code,--and then you're set. With Porsche, you nevr pop the clutch and you never try a 'burn out' because there is way too much grip from those massive rear tires and all you do is put a strain on the trany and engine,--needlessly.

99firehawk

your audi is probaly ok. I remember doing my first burnout at a car show with a stick car
thought i was hot sh&t.
pull up rev it up, sidestep the clutch and stand on the brake. enngine screaming car shaking smoke every where, then i realized it wasnt tire smoke drove the car 100 feet to a parking lot and let it cool off for a few hours, clutch was fine after that i drove it about 10k more miles and it was still 50% or so when i changed it to the race clutch thats still in the car.
theres nothin to check out at the dealer. when it starts slipping under normal driving then go get a new one

cdodkin

I'll second Brad on that one - think of all the abuse the clutch gets in a normal life - all you did was take a few months off of it in all probability.

Drive it till it starts to slip - then get a new one.

RaceCarDriver

I have an 05 Audi S4 with 33k miles and the clutch is fine. I've been on original clutches with over 130k miles on a car.