Shift into Neutral to save TO Bearing?

[Ben Swann]

Well this is my opinion based on what I know about how the mechanism works and from what
other engineers have told me.

You are better to take it out of gear while sitting at the light, since the application
of force is causing the bearing to turn continuously with a load.  Not totally bad, but
will definitely wear over time quicker than if no load on the bearing.  During a shift
the load is only momentary – perhaps a half a second at most, so a tiny bit of wear.
Now you are sitting at a light for 30 seconds – that is about 60 times the wear.

The worst thing to do is to ride the clutch.   This is where the driver keeps the car in
gear using the clutch to hold the car in position like on a hill than to stop
completely, depress clutch and use the brake.  If I see someone doing this, it makes me
cringe and if someone – namely my S.O. is doing this in a car I maintain, they will get
severe criticism and a big lecture about how doing this can wear a clutch out in no
time.

If you have ever had to do a clutch job because the release bearing grenaded, you would
probably take the extra moment to take it out of gear – for me it is second nature.  The
last several jobs involving clutches I’ve seen were actually a result of failed bearings
with the clutch still having a lot of life.  One job was when the clutch had been
recently replaced and was like brand new.  Amazing that someone did all that work and
didn’t take a few more $ and 15 min. to install a new release bearing!

Ben

[Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:19:18 -0500
From: "David Ullrich" <david.ullrich at gmail.com>
Subject: Shift into Neutral to save TO Bearing?
To: "quattro at audifans.com" <quattro at audifans.com>
Message-ID:
	<f4c312c80712301119o2a35b7dby2f7c7b0660f774d2 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I wanted to get other's opinions on this. When sitting at a stoplight,
should a manual tranie be shifted into neutral and the clutch released or
should it be left in 1st with the clutch FULLY depressed? I've never put my
cars into neutral at lights, but have also heard others say I am putting
extra wear on my throwout bearing causing premature wear. True? Untrue? A
real problem? I've never had to replace a TO bearing before a car needed a
full clutch job, but Ive only had one car that ever needed a new clutch and
that car had over 225,000 miles. All of my other cars have gone over 150,000
on the original clutch.

-- 
David G. Ullrich
Audiless for now]