A 1993 Volvo 460 GL that burned out a clutch.
Question: 1993 Volvo 460 GL
Dear Sirs
Please my car is Volvo 460 GL Model 1993, and I follow the maintenance system in the Volvo workshop correctly.
Please recently during a visit to hills for the snow play with my kids, and we drive very slowly since many cars in queue going up the hill and to keep the engine power we put the gear on 1 but as a result after about 10 - 15 minutes we small from the clutch disk as burning.
Now we have to replace, here we like to know how we avoided the same situation in the future? And the reasons for this result?
Many thanks
Regards
Mouhamed Al-Khouja
Answer:
It would have been good to know how many miles were on the vehicle and if it was the original clutch. I'm going to assume that there are a lot of miles based upon the age of the vehicle and that it is the original clutch.
Based on my assumptions then the clutch was probably due for replacement and the trip up the hill just hastened the end of its life. The best way to prolong the life of the clutch is to keep it either fully engaged or fully disengaged. The point in between is where the clutch disk wears. So if you keep it in that mid-point then the clutch disk will wear out very quickly. But in some situations that is unavoidable, such as starting to go from a stop uphill.
I remember one instance where I was driving a fully loaded truck into Manhattan from Long Island through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. When I emerged from the tunnel there is an upgrade and as luck would have traffic back up. It was quite a juggling act to get that truck starting to move from a dead stop, uphill without rolling over the car in back of me. I'm sure I wore out about 100 miles of clutch doing it but it was unavoidable. Not that I still didn't get a lot of horn blowing, screaming and cusing and more than a few hand gesture unique to New Yorkers.
The only time to clutch actually wears is when it is engaged, and most of that starting from a dead stop. If you do a lot of city driving where you do a lot of shifting it will wear out faster than if you did mostly highway driving where you need to shift very little.
