Whats up, I am a very happy (or until now) new owner of a six speed, anthrecite, non-nav 2003 CL Type-S. The car has 55,000 miles on it 5,000 from me personally. My problem started yesturday when I put the car in first to take off and it would hardly move until the rpm's got really high. It felt like the car was towing a boat.

After it was in the shop they told me the clutch needed to be replaced!! Is this extremely early for the Type-S? I drive it non-aggressive most of the time but who knows how the previous owner drove it.

Any advice on what else it might be? If I gotta pay for a new clutch I was thinkin of going with a better aftermarket one. Any suggestions?

 

Sounds like a slipping clutch to me.

Take a look at this site: http://www.ehow.com/how_7687_diagnos...ng-clutch.html and try #7 - #11, since its a six speed try it with 5th.

 

I just had mine replaced at 47500. I originally took it in for a leaking rear main oil seal, but I asked them to check the clutch since they were already separating the tranny from the motor.

the clutch had obviously been abused at some point in the car's life (I got it a year ago march and have put about 10k miles on it) - the flywheel was blued to the point of needing replacement, so I went ahead and had the clutch/flywheel replaced with oem parts.

of course, the dealer tore the driver's side inboard cv boot while removing or reinstalling the tranny, and the ended up having to do it twice because the tech didn't read the service manual - cl-s clutches have to be preloaded before bolting the assembly back into place. they missed this step and the car was almost undriveable because of it.

 

I think a lot of us are having clutch issues around 50,000 miles. The dealer told me my flywheel is unevenly worn and was giving me problems. I'm holding out til its more of an issue to get it all replaced. The whole clutch and flywheel assembly is around $900 in parts, and about 8 hours worth of labor...

 

Shyt, I'm going on 135K miles and still on my first clutch. How are you guys driving your cars?

And I don't drive it easy all the time.

 

80k here and the first clutch...im usually under 300 miles on a tank myself..

 

mine was a dealer demo unit , so that probably explains my clutch's shortened lifespan. I knew what I was getting when I bought the car, so I'd already budgeted for an eventual clutch replacement.

 

BigJoshCLS, you should have posted this in the CL forum, and not cartalk...

https://acurazine.com/forums/acurazine-1/

I'm suprised at the number of responsed you got here...

 

135k on a 03 CLS?

 

that's impressive, must be a good setup. Most guys are getting 10-20K out of the GTO's shitty clutch


Can't wait for mine to go so I can use the one from the Z06

 

Mine seems fine at 52K miles.
The only real option is a stock replacement for now. Stock is fine, a lot of people are running 300WHP with the stock setup.
CT's setup is hit or miss. Some have good results, some bad.
There's another company that is working on a clutch, at least that's what they told us. No real time frame though.

 

Well soon ill hopefully see how long the CL-S clutch will last in my TL. Most of my honda clutches have lasted over 85k

 

Yes, this is very early in the life of a "normally operated" clutch assembly to start doing this.. assuming that severe slippage is actually the root problem.

You should expect 3 to 4 times this mileage (at the minimum) for a clutch assembly.

 

If that's all they're getting from their clutches, either they are doing some serious racing, or GM is out to lunch in the drive train area.

Traditionally, American clutches (especially GM products) have been far superior to anything coming from Europe or Japan. This would be a truly sad state of affairs if the new GTO clutches are gone after only 20,000 miles.

 

Basically if you can't get at the very minimum at least 100,000 miles out of a clutch assembly and you're not racing your car or towing a boat or live in a city like San Francisco, you are doing something VERY wrong in your operation of this unit. In fact, 200,000+ miles is more realistic.

 

I drive my car alot for work and stuff. But since I got married my mileage has gone down quite a bit because I'm not making as many trips to my wife's parents home. We go there about once every other week instead of 3 times a week before we got married to visit her.

And prior to that I did a lot of driving going out with friends and stuff.

Adds up quick in so cal. At my current rate though I'm down to nearly under 20K per year unlike the first three years where I averaged nearly 35-45K per year!

In addition, I bought my 03 in Late August of '02. So that's 4 months of extra miles before I even hit the year that my car belonged to.

This is the one thing that peeves me about mileage ratings for used cars in KBB. They based it all on the year of the car instead of by the actual purchase date.

So my car is devalued a hell of a lot more even though I bought it a lot earlier.

 

So a symptom of a car with a slipping clutch would be poor gas mileage?

 

it is a truely sad state of affairs, a few hard launches is about all it can take. Sure some guys have gotten good mileage out of them (50K+), some guys have gotten less then 5K.

 

I think there's also a defect in some 6mt clutches that leads to premature clutch wear. One Acura doesn't believe there is cause the failure rate is so low. But the fact it's a clutch & it's a wear item, & relies on how it's treated. We can never prove this defect is there.
A few members have had clutches go out in under 30K miles of which they owned since new & never abused it.