DanW
Well-Known Member
No. Felt fine. Noticed fluid on the ground well before anything felt off. It gave no clue until it had no hydraulic fluid left in the system. It was quick and dramatic at that point, but lost fluid gradually and did have some air bubbles in it before going belly up. If gradual, I'd have felt it and fixed it before leaving on a trip.I think you will agree that you clearly recognized when your fluid level reached the point that you could not fully disengage the clutch. You had physical resistance in the shift lever and audible grinding of the gears. Under those circumstances, you would be introducing heat into the system ONLY while at a stop, with the clutch in, and in gear. Nobody could ignore that for long enough AND sit at a lot of really really really long lights on gear to ever generate the 1100 degrees or whatever.
The reservoir hose recall was not connected to the spectacular failures. MOST JL owners have had their clutches perform as designed. When operating properly, they are quite robust and can handle a lot of abuse. I've not heard of anyone reaching the point of wearing out their clutch.
SOME though have had their clutches not perform as designed. Mine was one that did not engage both discs evenly which resulted in inconsistent engagement points and general frustration. Even malfunctioning like this, it handled heavy extended towing and off-roading without failure.
A few malfunctioned mechanically like mine but the discs stuck to the point they never fully engaged leading to extreme heat and failure.
All clutches of all makes and models eventually wear to the point of failure and inability to hold torque under load. Until now, that failure point resulted in lots of smoke, terrible smell, and loss of forward momentum. This Jeep clutch is the only I've heard of that can fracture and fly apart when reaching end-of-life. Yes, the software update will likely prevent such catastrophic failures when everyone's eventually reaches end-of-life, but I feel better knowing my clutch doesn't have that weakness to start with.
The type of wear causing the heat buildup is not the same as normal wear. And no pressure plate is designed to withstand those kinds of temps. With normal wear, even if this clutch wears more quickly than it should, that level of temperature would never be approached.
I believe the clutch wear and pressure plate failure are only symptoms. Not the disease. Otherwise, mine would have undoubtedly failed or wore out by now.
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