How can you tell if a clutch is fried?

Nightmare9

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Say you are driving a rental car and after a minimal number of miles of city driving (8-10) the clutch is smoking.

Is that enough to kill it. Or will it be ok if no further abuse?

Asking for a friend, because I totally wasn’t starting the rental in 3rd gear by mistake.
 
Where in the world did your friend find a rental car with a manual transmission in this day and age?
 
We are in Scotland. They charge extra for the automatic cars. In England all the cheap cars were also stick.
I drove a stick for about 22 years, so I didn’t think it would be a problem.
It was some combination of jet lag, being tired, a Right Drive vehicle and adjusting to the wrong side of the road.
The difference between First and Third gear is about 1 cm. It just didn’t click in my head that I was in the wrong gear. Until I went to back up.
We put about 180 miles on the car today. It seems fine, but still smells burnt. No smoke any more, just the smell.
We will finish the trip and see what they say.
 
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Ok, it's been a week since I returned the car and they haven't charged me anything yet... :cool:
We drove the car for a week and put over 700 miles onto it. The smell went away after a couple of days.
I do feel a little bad, I didn't realize at the time, but the car was literally brand new. It had 11 miles when we rented it.
It was a Nissan Qashqai (about the size of the Rogue). Once I got the hang of shifiting again, I think I only stalled 1 times in the following week.



Rent1.jpg


Rent2.jpg
 
Meh, I revved the engine and dumped the clutch on a 300 horsepower AWD vehicle and it slipped like mad and let out copious amounts of smoke. The clutch made it to 130,000 miles before needing replacement. Had I not done that, it might have made it to 140,000 miles.
 
We rented a car (Fiat Panda) in Italy and they were only offering manuals (thru enterprise). Similarly, 1 and 3 were very close and there were a few times where I could tell I was about to stall it. Reverse also had a collar below the knob that you were supposed to lift when shifting, that took me a solid 10 minutes to find.