2003 MC w/77k miles on it, all ours.
I just took the car over from the wife ~3 months ago (so it's getting driven a bit harder I'd imagine).
today, driving to lunch I noticed a squealing noise whenever the clutch pedal was in (ie at a stop light, or while shifting). I also noticed a hot/burning rubber smell.

It does NOT sound like the chewbaca issues I've found here: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...he-clutch.html

which is the closest thing I could find searching... So what is it, time for a clutch replacement? How hard is that to DIY? It's just weird to me that a clutch issue makes noise when pressed in?

Thanks!

 

I'm thinking "wife", "clutch" and "77K" mentioned in the same post might point to replacement. My wife isn't bad with the clutch, but I still wince 5 times on every trip.
Usually the high gear/high speed slip gives you a little notice and with most issues like that I just wait and see. Any burning smell should be accompanied with slippage though, so I can't really say for sure if it is your issue or not.

 

hard to tell if it's slipping because the damn thing has always felt so slow to me (I'm coming from a modded WRX to a stock cooper). I haven't seen a RPM spike, so it's not slipping that bad if it is. But I have noticed it's acting funny in first gear starts though, then on the way home tonight the clutch got VERY heavy for a bit, almost like I couldn't press it in enough to get it into first, then it loosened up again? Weird. But I've only had one clutch in my 17 years of driving ever actually go on me where it slipped. The only other clutch I replaced was at 100k in the WRX because they were in there for something else anyway...

 

Is the pedal looser in the morning (Motor cold)? From the sounds of it you might be plagued with a faulty throw-out bearing. When mine started going it would work great when the car wasn't warmed up. once it was warmed up the pedal was like pushing a brick into sand accompanied with a nice rubber on metal sound. I never had a burning smell perhaps yours is binding so bad it isn't disengaging all the way?

Also I replaced my clutch with a friend it took 2 days and was somewhat of a pain. If you have a Bentley manual and aren't scared to work on your car it isn't that bad of a job. The one thing I didn't like doing was eyeballing the new friction disk when installing it (didn't have access to the alignment tool).