Is my driving wearing out my clutch?

A._Badger

I'm old school, too (damnit - I'm old!) and I've disagreed with ''brakes not gears' policy since it began to creep in, which ISTR was around 35 years ago.

In my view, if you encourage drivers to use their brakes as a default, they will continue to do so, regardless of the road conditions. On wet, oily, leafy and icy roads that strikes me as inherently more dangerous than being in the right gear and not making sudden changes to speed by using the brakes.

bigjl

cajef wrote: »

The DSA advise block gear changing nowadays, slow down using the brakes then change to a gear that you need, change from fourth or fifth to second when appropriate in other words miss a gear out, if approaching lights that have just changed to red and you know you are going to have to stop stay in the gear you are in then when you stop select first ready to move off, saves changing down through every gear and unnecessary gear changing

The changing down more than one gear at a time when approaching say a roundabout or junction where you are going to probably come to a near or complete stop has been part of "system of vehicle control" as taught to the Ambulance service for a fair few years, not sure if it differs in this respect to Police Roadcraft which is was still used by St John when I trained, though they may have changed since then, it was a decade ago.

Glad to see the DSA have changed to what I think is a better way of doing things.

A bit pointless in the big smoke as all our vehicles used on Blues are Auto, well apart from the major incident Renault "BigFoot", but you have to excuse tose, they are M reg with mostly less than 10000kms on them.

As far as the OP goes, the biggest cause of wear on a clutch is harsh acceleration without the clutch fully engaged, or driving along with the foot sitting on the clutch all the time.

You can change gears many thousands of times, so long as you don't abuse the clutch then it will last many years, for example when I had manual cars for courier work and minicab work I would do lots and lots of gearchanges, only went through one clutch, which wasn't actually completely knackered, but the car, a 1.7i Renault 21 GTS on a K plate, needed two driveshafts and as the car had done nigh on 150k with the original clutch it seemed prudent to change it while they had that area stripped out.

Strider590

attila_ wrote: »

I never ever drop more than one gear at a time and always use the engine revs to slow car down as much as possible. I will never come to a stop without cycling down through every gear.

No problem with this as long as it's not something your overly concentrating on doing. Gear changes are one thing with driving a car which should be second nature, you should not have to think about it and should never need to look down at the gearstick.
The biggest problem is when something unexpected and you don't have time to do all your gear changes. You find yourself in the wrong gear and panic briefly sets in followed by lots of tooting from the cars behind

My driving will be a mix of what you do, if i'm slowing for an island or something where I don't yet know if i'll have to stop, then i'll drop down gears in sequence so as not to get caught out.... But otherwise I will just "box change" to the gear I know i'm going to need (never do this into 1st gear though).

Sometimes going the other way, i'll change up from 1st to 3rd, or 2nd to 4th if i've had to use a burst of acceleration to get up to the speed limit (when entering a motorway for example).

Inactive

cajef wrote: »

The DSA advise block gear changing nowadays, slow down using the brakes then change to a gear that you need, change from fourth or fifth to second when appropriate in other words miss a gear out, if approaching lights that have just changed to red and you know you are going to have to stop stay in the gear you are in then when you stop select first ready to move off, saves changing down through every gear and unnecessary gear changing

Not just " nowadays " they have for many, many years.;)

Inactive

bigjl wrote: »

The changing down more than one gear at a time when approaching say a roundabout or junction where you are going to probably come to a near or complete stop has been part of "system of vehicle control" as taught to the Ambulance service for a fair few years, not sure if it differs in this respect to Police Roadcraft which is was still used by St John when I trained, though they may have changed since then, it was a decade ago.

Glad to see the DSA have changed to what I think is a better way of doing things.

A bit pointless in the big smoke as all our vehicles used on Blues are Auto, well apart from the major incident Renault "BigFoot", but you have to excuse tose, they are M reg with mostly less than 10000kms on them.

As far as the OP goes, the biggest cause of wear on a clutch is harsh acceleration without the clutch fully engaged, or driving along with the foot sitting on the clutch all the time.

You can change gears many thousands of times, so long as you don't abuse the clutch then it will last many years, for example when I had manual cars for courier work and minicab work I would do lots and lots of gearchanges, only went through one clutch, which wasn't actually completely knackered, but the car, a 1.7i Renault 21 GTS on a K plate, needed two driveshafts and as the car had done nigh on 150k with the original clutch it seemed prudent to change it while they had that area stripped out.

They haven't " changed " they have been advocating it for many, many years.

Inactive

KillerWatt wrote: »

Same here, in fact we were taught back in the day that if we didn't use the box to slow down then we would fail the driving test.

How long ago was that ?

The official DOE then Dept of Transport and now the DSA line has been to use brakes, not gears for stopping, for more years than I care to remember.

maryke

DavidHayton wrote: »

My car is now 16 years old and still on its first clutch.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat ??
That's damn impressive!

I think you might have a good feel for equalling your engine revs to the clutch, that could definately add years to your clutch.

But still, hats off...

wba31

my old man's a mechanic and warned me against sitting at traffic lights etc in gear with foot on the clutch as he said that can cause problems

Lirin

Block gear changing was used for my test- 13 years ago. Same as someone above, I vary between cycling through the gears to block changes, depending on the road condition. Was taught to slow the car by gears rather than brake.

vikingaero

I'm foot on clutch if I'm the first at the lights so that I can get away quicker (normally with handbrake on, but depends on the lights). Otherwise neutral/handbrake all the time. Those who pogo on their clutch at lights make me laugh.