Not a good day for my little car. Dealer says I have "abused" the clutch. I have been driving high performance cars for over 20 years and this is the first time I have had a clutch go out so fast. I find it a hard pill to swallow to pay $3000 for a a repair that is not covered under warranty. I have taken up to a regional level and hope this gets resolved. I have seen others with this problem. Is this a known issue for early model JCWs?

All help and thoughts appreciated. (2009 JCW Convertible)

 

You might include the year of your JCW to aid people's responses. You say "early model," but you posted in the 2nd gen area, so I'm assuming you have a later model...?

 

What year is your Mini? 17,000 is really fast to burnout a clutch with "normal" driving for any year Mini. $3000 dollars! What the heck?

 

In his first post (July '09) Darth said that they had bought an '09 JCW 'vert.

 

Sorry it was a 2009 JCW Convertible.

 

I'll bet it was the dual mass flywheel (DMF) that failed cause when they do they take the whole clutch assembly with it. This a known issue and has been since Valeo issued a service bulletin in early '07 for all manual transmission MINIs. That bulletin also shows the mechanic whether it was driver abuse or DMF failure. Guess which one they uaually chose?

 

I would also wonder, given the frequency of the failures, if the original factory adjustment is correct...

 

Not that this helps the situation. But, I've been driving manual transmission cars for over 20 years now and with this car I feel I have to slip/feather the clutch considerably more in first gear to keep it from stalling versus any car I've owned in the past. For this reason I do not see getting my usual ~100K city miles out of this clutch. $3000 for a clutch change is pretty steep especially for a factory unit.