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i dont want to sound like a noob, but i have a question thats been bugging me. what exactly does riding the clutch mean? is it when you're half way off the clutch pedal when you're driving the car and its in gear? does it count if you're at a red light and you keep the gear in 1st but keep the clutch pedal depressed (held down) and not moving? thanks guys?

 
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Riding the clutch is used in different ways.. the short answer to your Q is yes.

If you are in gear and aren't planning on shifting, you are "riding the clutch" if your foot is on the pedal, no mater how much it's pushed in. Putting pressure on the pedal means that there will be more wear on the clutch because it won't have as much pressure keeping it engaged to the driveshaft and it will slip / wear out / abrase down. think like a DJ would hold a record on a spinning turntable, eventually the felt wears down when the record slips over it.

Definition 2 is the stopped at a stoplight one. if you press down on the clutch, the clutch bearing (forget what its exactly called) is put under tremendous strain. There's basically the hinge / weight bearing part that the clutch's springs are exerting their force on when the clutch is out / disengaged. normally it's for short periods of time, but if youa re constantly putting a really heavy pressure on the bearing for 2 minutes at a time every time you hit a red light, you will wear it out prematurely and have to get a clutch job early.

moral of the story: only press the clutch if you are in the process (or will be soon) of shifting into or out of gear. at a stoplight, leave the car in neutral with your foot off the clutch.

 
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Shoot! I drove my car really bad for a whole year. Anyhow I'll try not to ride the clutch yet. At every red light I had my car in first with the clutch in.

 
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^^^ me too....oops.

 
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It's cool... I used to do it too until I started checking out the forums. Another thing to be wary of is downshifting with a big RPM differential. Here's why:

A manual tranny has an input shaft, which can be disengaged when you are in neutral, and an output shaft thats connected permanently to the wheels. To get the gears engaged, the input shaft has to be turning at the same rate as the output shaft. Before synchros, you had to shift to neutral, disengage the clutch (foot off pedal), rev the engine till you thought it was about where the engine RPM's would be after the shift, then quickly shift into gear when the RPM's of both the wheels and the engine were the same.

Still with me?

OK, that procedure (called double clutching) is still used in big rigs and large abused vehicles, but it's a real pain in the ***. with synchro (or synchronizer) rings in a trans, the rings engage when you shift with the clutch pedal down and forcibly spin the input shaft to the correct velocity. Without synchros, if you tried to shift at different RPM's, youd get a grinding of gears, even with the clutch down. The synchros are somewhat sacrificial: they wear down so your gears don't have to.

If you are upshifting, then the wear is pretty minimal, as your drop RPM's from one shift to the next and the synchros dont' have to do much work at all to sync the shafts. However, when downshifting, you usually are adding 1000's of RPMs btween gears. lots of synchro wear to be found in having to spin a shaft up 1500 RPM's in just one shift from 4th to 2nd coing around that corner racing style. It's wear like that that causes hard shifting around the 3rd to 5th year of the cars life if it was driven hard.

So what to do to stop this wear? For one, "A good downshift should be heard, not felt." If you feel a lurch when you suddenly double your RPM's you are probably wearing your synchros a bit much. either don't shift into a gear that low, or double clutch a bit (The racer types willt ell you to heel-toe, which in my exp with our cars requires changing pedal height)

If you wanna double clutch, shift into neutral, rev the engine where you think the rpm's should be, then push in the clutch and shift to the other gear. presto, no synchro wear, but an admitted pain in the ***.

For heel toeing, toe on gas, heel on brake. (Right foot) left foot on clutch. as you push the clutch in, brake and blip the revs up to where they should be, then shift into the next gear and pull the clutch out.

Hope that helps :-)

 
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very helpful man

 
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Double de clutching(with rev-mathcing) is the only way I downshift. I have to work on heel-toe.

 
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thanks for replying, it helps me a lot. but i guess the damage is already done, i only have 27k miles on the stock clutch and i feel it already slipping i was thinking about getting a kevlar stage 1 clutch. i heard those can go through a lot of abuse and still be ok.

 
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Do you work at Zebra technologies?

 
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^^ why do you think i work at Zebra Technologies? and no, i dont.

 
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To delay the inevitable, you can granny off the line by letting the clutch out and pressing the gas so the revs stay constant... that way as little rotational pressure willb e exerted on the clutch as possible. It may slip less. Meanwhile, check the pennysaver for clutch specials i guess

 
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Cause there is a company called Zebra Technologies un vernon hills which his not too far fro chicago.