MillerTime12oz

I have an 05 tl and my girlfriends father asked to drive it. He has an older stick Corvette so I thought he knew how to drive stick since it was nothing new to him. He took off from a stop and had it in 3rd gear by mistake and just kept going riding the hell out of the clutch at 3500 rpms for a good 10 seconds and it smelt horrible when he was done. The clutch feels no different, but my concern is the long term damage it did? How much life did this incident take of my clutch? I have babied the clutch in this car and made me sick when it happened.

SouthernBoy

Your girlfriend's father has no idea how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. No one who does would make this mistake. We all, on occasion, hit third when we meant first or fourth when we wanted reverse, but we immediately know that we have selected the wrong gear. So we make the correction and get on with things. This is NOT a mistake an experience operator would make.

As to how much wear your clutch suffered? No telling but the fact that you smelled the infamous telltale odor indicates material was burned. There could be some contact surface scoring with the pressure place and flywheel. What you want to do is watch for any shuttering or chattering when releasing the clutch. This is not uncommon on cool days after the car has sat for a number of hours, but it should go away almost immediately. If you find your car continuing to do this, you may have a problem. Also be cognizant of any slippage or strange sounds.

And while I know it hurts to hear this, let this be a lesson to you to never let anyone drive your car.

MillerTime12oz

Thanks for the response SouthernBoy. I have not noticed any shuttering when I release the clutch or any slippage. I was concerned of scarring on the flywheel, however I feel it would shutter like you stated if there was anything severe. It just pisses me off thinking about how many miles it could have wore off my clutch.

He was pulling out into an intersection and another car was coming so he just kept going. Either way it was unacceptable. I don't see how anyone would keep going, unless you obviously don't realize the damage you are causing. To many people think if there is instantly nothing wrong with it everything is fine, people don't realize the long term damages they instill.

SouthernBoy

Yep. So many people who have learned to drive a manual transmission have been taught by a family member or friend who had some bad habits and lacked knowledge about the proper operation of a manual. Then the new driver picks up those habits and continues doing them without realizing the harm he's doing to his machine. My father-in-law drove manual transmission vehicles for most of his life yet he didn't have a clue about how to really operate one. He would commonly overrev the engine when starting out and ride the clutch until wheel speed caught up to engine speed. I'm certain he thought I didn't know what I was doing, but I did and he didn't.

I trust very few people to drive my personal machine. My wife and both of my daughters are excellent operators of the manual transmission, but it pretty much ends there. I hope everything works out to be Ok with your car and that there is no appreciable damage. Please do keep us posted.

Pat04TL

Sounds like daddy just hates you and took it out on your car. Since you say the clutch feels ok now, go elope with the girlfriend and call it even. Or offer to drive his Vette and treat it the same way. The ol' Vette will be on a flatbed in no time... All kidding aside, Honda products can take A LOT of abuse. If all feels ok now, you're probably in good shape.

MAZZMO

I own a 05 TL with over 100 K miles on it and I am wondering what other people are seeing for mileage on their MT TL's before they need replacement. I do baby this car and do not abuse the MT I was wondering if others could comment as to what mileage they had when they had to replace the MT ?

nfnsquared

Assuming no abuse, the M/T should last longer than you'll own the car. The clutch will go out long before the M/T, but it should easily last 200K with proper clutch use. I have an 04 M/T with 101K and the clutch is still fine...

If you haven't yet switched to GM Syncromesh Friction Modified transmission fluid, you might want to consider doing so [do a search for "syncromesh" or "12377916" (the part #)]. Also, if you haven't done a transmission fluid change at all you should get it done ASAP.

AckTL05

iTrader: (18)

I beat the hell out of my car before I built it up and stock clutch was changed at 55k, even though it had about 10-15k more miles left in it. I know its short, but I don't do the "cool" hold the clutch in and rev or such but I did do a lot of traffic driving.

Lets just say I was young and my other two cars were treated the same way and couldn't take the abuse that the TL can handle. For instance the STI had power steering problems, blew third gear and clutch at the same time, turbo ceased from an oil line being knocked off. I got rid of that piece of garbage because it was nothing but problems. Also once they fixed the transmission, it never felt the same.

I hate cars

I hate to say it but I've done sort of the same thing when I was younger. I was in a friend's almost new 5.0 Mustang. Pulled up next to some girls at a redlight. We had a few words and the light went green. It was then that I realized I was in 3rd and no way was I going to downshift back to 1st (it had 2 chamber Flowmasters and would've been obvious I screwed up). I dipped in about half throttle and kept rpms around 1,500. It probably sounded like I was driving an auto lol.

SouthernBoy

Yes sir.