NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote
NY wrote
What is a good life for a clutch?

I forgot to say that the previous car, the Golf, I used daily for more
than 45 years and only stopped using it when I had stupidly not
bothered to fix the known leaking windscreen and it eventually
rusted the floor and I couldnt be arsed to cut that out and replace it.

That is a fantastic life for a car that is used every day.

And it required very little in the way of repairs in that time, just
an alternator regulator, distributor thing and an indicator relay.

The distributor arm was almost certainly due to me choosing to
remove it to prevent theft of the car when I was away from home
without taking the car. And the car never spent any time in the
garage or carport either, because I never got around to building one.

The longest I've had a car is a little over 10 years from new.

My current Hyundai Getz is older than that but doesnt
get daily use now I have retired and I got it after I retired.

Both bought new.

Of my past cars (based on DVLA information) the oldest lasted 18 years
until it was last taxed.

The bite point has got gradually higher,

Havent seen that either.

That's a standard symptom of clutch wear.

Sure, I meant I havent seen that level of wear in any car of mine.

To begin with, a self-adjusting mechanism compensates for greater clutch
plate travel as the clutch's frictional surfaces wear, but eventually the
end of that self-adjusting range is reached and the clutch pedal has o be
raised higher off the floor before the bite point is reached. I suppose in
theory a garage could make a manual adjustment to the cable (or fluid
mechanism) so the bite point is reached with the pedal closer to the
floor, where it is easier to control without lifting your heel off the
floor.

Yes I wonder why cars still have a Bowden cable to a sensor
under the bonnet, when nowadays the sensor could be right next to the
pedal, eliminating the friction of the Bowden cable.

Most dont have a bowden cable to the sensor under the bonnet.

Ah. I remember my first two fuel-injected cars in the 1990s had a big
rotary variable resistor under the bonnet, roughly where a carburettor
used to be, operated by a Bowden cable. I've just checked my present car
and I can't see any sign of something like that so they've stopped doing
it that way now.

Yeah, very crude approach to morphing the design IMO. What brands ?

With those the problem appears to just be they press the accelerator
instead of the brake.

It may be a bit of both:

I'm not convinced. The ones that get media coverage are
because someone got injured or the wall got demolished
an in that case it must the wrong pedal was used.

maybe (and I'm speculating) they press the accelerator a bit too hard,
panic when the car surges forwards unexpectedly, and hit the accelerator
harder instead of taking their foot off the accelerator and hitting the
brake.

No evidence that thats what happened.

If you get to hear a driver's account of what happened, it's usually along
the lines of "the car suddenly surged forward - I don't know how it
happened" which could be either excessive pressure on the accelerator or
pressing the accelerator instead of the brake. It's difficult to tell from
the small amount of information you usually hear about the cause.

I've never seen a car surge forward that dramatically except
when the accelerator is used instead of the brake accidentally.