I can't do it, on the very rare occasion that I drive my FJ40 the clutch is just too damn heavy and I have to go to neutral at lights. I think the clutch from Advanced Adapters is heavy duty and is just that, heavy. It's hydraulic but still very heavy.

Yep... I'm in neutral... watching the lights and ready to go on green though... my left leg is lazy :D.

Absolutely agreed. Or just a crap driver. I've ridden with some folks that "could drive a stick" and I got out thinking "nope, can't drive a stick."

All of your cars are tiny and underpowered. No mechanical stress on anything.

The pilot bearing is the small one mounted in/on the flywheel and simply stabilizes the tip (just the! :eek:) of the gearbox input shaft (not much force there, ever); H&T probably meant the clutch release bearing which does carry quite a bit of force whenever the clutch pedal is depressed/held down.

Yes...my thought as well. My old '65 Mustang was hard on the clutch bearing and pressure plate...and I had to replace both a couple of times. The tranny was so tiny that I could drive the front end up on ramps and slide under and unbolt it and easily just use my arms to take it out and replace it (no jack)...bench press style. I never had a tranny bearing go out in 260K miles, but did have to replace the brass sychro blocking rings so I didn't have to double clutch. I would pull out the tranny/clutch and troubleshoot...then put it back and drive it for weeks until the parts came in as I only had the one car (and no money).

But it's designed to take that force in normal circumstances
Anybody who is smooth with the clutch will be just fine

people who think dumping the clutch will make them faster at red light , and test their metal a lot, won't be fine..

But that's because they are not driving it like a normal person, and think every green light is time to launch like a bell end.
I drive my cars hard, but that 0-10 accel at the lights in 1st gear, is really not an area where i ever stress my car. It's not worth it, there are no prizes to be won
And in 25 or so years, i've never burned, worn, or broken a clutch, or anything else on my transmissions of any of my cars.

Being fast is being smooth. And if you are smooth you don't break yer transmission.
Now if you are Max Verstappen, with a team behind you to rebuild your transmission and you have a lot at stake, well, then it doesn't matter if you launch at the green light.. And then it won't matter if that bearing is sensitive, because they'll just replace it often enough. But with robotic gearboxes, they took out the bell-end's clutch finesse, and replaced it with perfect robotic timing so it's both fast and still mechanically smooth

one more thing, consider the type of bearing used for the clutch release bearing.


And now think about it : You have 4 other , similar bearings on your car, that do WAY more work, see WAY more stress.

Wheel bearings.

How often do you replace your wheel bearings?
They last a really long time

Now multiply that time by 5 , because there's no way a clutch release bearing has even a fifth of the wheel bearings stresses on it.
You'll do a lot of driving before even coming near the issues people imagine.

At least if the clutch play and all other things are in spec , but if they aren't, idling in neutral isn't going to fix that either.

My only manual car in my 85 911. I don't sit at a red light with the clutch pushed in. With a cable driven clutch the cable is under stress, as it the omega spring and the pressure plate. My 914 had a similar setup minus the omega spring. I wore out and had to replace a couple of clutch cables. I had one pressure plate just fail while in stop and go traffic.

If you are driving your modern cars for a handful of years, and moving on, yea clutch failure is not likely. Drive 36 year old cars for 25+ years and you will see clutch parts fail or wear out.

The muscle cars of the 70s here with large displacement high torque engines that can smoke the rear tires ate through a clutch in short order if in a lot of stop light racing. One of my buddies had a big block 454 high compression engine in a Chevelle that would have clutch problems one per year. The good news is replacing the parts were cheap, and done is a day. That clutch was quite heavy, and tiring.

I think it’s so funny when they drive like a55holes and the company name and phone number is on the side of the truck.

or sit in Tjam and throw out garbage...
With facebook page on the back

Always makes for a nice picture and subsequent upload

Once had it happen he got back out to pick it up minutes later :D

I just read the whole thread and was going to jump in and agree with you until I got to this post. Clutch throw-out or release bearing and wheel bearings do not work in a similar fashion at all and are not built the same, at all. And wheel bearings fail, especially the sealed ones, which are similar to a clutch bearing only in that way. Other wheel bearings bear no resemblance to clutch bearings, which have enormous side force applied to one half of the bearing every time the clutch is depressed.

I'm about to replace all of the sealed wheel bearings in my ~200k mile minivan because 2 are bad, (noisy), and the others can't be far behind.

You can sit at red lights with the clutch depressed all you want, it won't do anything other than make your leg tired. If you have a cable activated clutch, it will definitely shorten the cable life. Automotive clutches are intended to be depressed for very short periods of time, otherwise there is a neutral position on the shifter. You are correct that the pilot bearing is irrelevant...even when they wear out, the car still generally functions fine.

I currently drive a manual car hundreds of miles a day in the city, (Uber), and it is not a challenge to put the car in gear and be ready when my light turns green. I also think that the drivers I've seen in Europe suck, using their hand brake as a crutch to stand still with a manual, (on LEVEL pavement!!), I've never done that on a steep hill. Zero skill, at least the taxi drivers in Ireland and France I've risen with. They were obviously taught to do it that way, shame they don't teach them to be more proficient drivers.

In college I worked for a motorcycle shop and one of my responsibilities was picking up broken down motorcycles in the company truck with the company name and phone number in big letters down the side. This was before cell phones so people had to really want to complain about my driving and boy did they! My boss finally said, "I got another phone call about your driving today, but you're so fast in getting the job done that I'm just taking the phone number off the truck."

As far as manuals go: I always go into neutral at stop lights. It takes about a second to put it into gear and start moving so I'm still usually the first car to pull away when the light turns green. I don't get what the fuss is about.

I'm 68 and have driven manuals since age 16. I never 'slip it into neutral' at a stop light.
I've never had a pilot or throw-out bearing fail either.

That's a great story!

If I pull up to an extra long light in my truck (auto trans.) I throw it into Park just to rest my leg!

Eeh not sure what you mean with that?

Handbrake is used for parking, why wouldn't you use the parking brake, even in level pavement?? It's like the P on an automatic , but for Manuals.

And on a hill it's supposed to be parking brake + gear left in 1st

So not sure what skill has to do with it on a level pavement??