First of all, sorry if this isn't the right place to post this thread. And secondly, I'm not super well versed in mechanical terminology or understanding what parts of a car do what, so bear with me. I'll try to keep it brief. Thanks in advance for your help.

Basically, I bought a new 2-door Sport in December. I had never driven a Standard before, but knew it was something I wanted to do. My old man in fact was the one who test drove it and took it home from the dealer before teaching me.

I picked it up pretty quick and was cruising around the town in about a week. And I've loved doing it for the 5 or so months I've had it, but what worries me is that I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, and that I may be causing damage to the clutch or to the transmission.

These worries started when I realized that the clutch was feeling quite a bit rougher than usual while shifting. I feel like when I first had it, the pedal would go down and come up silky smooth, but now most days I tend to feel a relatively significant rumbling sensation in there. It's weird too because maybe once every week or two I'll drive it and it'll feel much better. Is this normal? Or should depressing the clutch basically always feel as smooth as it would if the engine was off?

One behaviour I had that I've since learned was bad was letting up on the clutch to balance at a red light on a hill or to creep forward slowly. I stopped doing this once I learned not to but there was still quite a while where I was doing it. Could this have caused a lot of damage? The rule of thumb I tend to go by now is that as long is the pedal is all the way up, or all the way down, I'm not causing any damage. Is this accurate?

So, does it sound like I may actually have something wrong and should bring it in to get looked at? Or is that rougher ride some days just the nature of the Jeep and I'm just being paranoid? Any advice or tips you all have are much appreciated. Thanks!

 

Sounds like you're doing it like the rest of us to me.

The negatives you mentioned are true. I have a 2007 with 91 k on the clock. My throwout bearing is shot but the clutch is still great.

Don't worry about it so much. These types of trans have been in use for a century. They are pretty resilient

 

Sounds like your doing just fine and the fact that u worry so much might be making u hyper sensitive to things. As far as riding clutches at stop lights and hills, well my dad's cherokee survived 4 boys learning to drive it and when he sold it to a teenager with 300,000 miles on it, it was still on original clutch and bearings. In fact 6 years later that kid is still driving it with same clutch with probably closer to 400k on it.

 

You'll be fine. It's a pretty robust system and much cheaper to repair than the auto. Most of the short life failures that I have seen from abuse happen due to off-roading.

 

You're fine.

There are some finer points of driving a stick, learning how to be really easy on syncros, how to change gears with nearly zero clutch slippage, and how to engage the clutch minimally when taking off. You can brush up on how to rev-match and all that, maybe even heel-toe if you make a crazy pair of shoes (the pedals in the wrangler, almost impossible to do heel-toe).

The clutch will also feel different depending on temperature, humidity, and one thing a lot of people forget is that if the A/C is running, you have to contend with that occasionally messing with you when you're letting out the clutch, or trying to do a perfect rev match. The A/C creates a little more drag on the engine and requires a bit more gas when you're taking off or shifting with the A/C pump engaged.