I smoked my clutch today

[AlgUSF]

I'm in the same boat, I was at Home Depot today and tried to climb the curb in 2HI, stalled it out and gave up. I'm looking forward to 5yr/50K being over and then I will swap in a Dana 44 in the front and some 5.13 or 4.88 gears. Given Chrysler's reputation for quality, I'm not messing with anything overly mechanical until they're off the hook on the warranty.

That being said, I do a lot of fun stuff with my Jeep. People at church look at me weird when they see me park in the ditch at an extreme angle, family jumps out and heads on in for service.

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[J0E]

Better to learn this on a trail. Be in 4L, and you should be able to just ease the clutch out with no gas and crawl up things. I can’t remember if you have the rubicon t-case, but if you don’t a 20” obstacle should be ok. If you actually manage to stall, you have to go old school and bring the engine up to 1500 rpm with the clutch fully in and hold the skinny pedal in that POSITION (not that RPM) while you work the clutch to climb (with more room before you stall now that you’re letting the engine breathe more than idle). Easier said than done, especially if you’re trying to step through something and have to keep stopping.

That's a lot easier said than done.

Easier said than done, especially if you’re trying to step through something and have to keep stopping.

Oh, you said that.

I can’t remember if you have the rubicon t-case, but if you don’t a 20” obstacle should be ok.

Unlikely in a Willys.

All the folks in my club with sticks smoke their clutches every time we go through the really rough crawling, and these are experienced folks. I often get out and spot my wife, who has practically zero experience, and she easily gets through where the sticks struggle and smoke. It's pretty easy in M1 when you follow the hand signals and crawl over obstacles.

You're supposed to drive around stuff like that... Rock climbing tears up the hardware. Leave that to those with the bottomless pockets and/or no brains.

Not if you have an automatic, crawling vertical puts no excessive strain on any component.

Air down the tires...I

Yup, that helps.

Think of the clutch as wiper fluid, the more you feather it, the sooner it needs a refill.

I'm in the same boat, I was at Home Depot today and tried to climb the curb in 2HI, stalled it out and gave up.

heresy, you're asking to burn up your clutch. Drop it in low range to climb. There's no virtue practicing climbing in high range.

 

[Rubi6mt]

2021 JLUR 6-speed on 35's still on 4.10's.

I suggest practicing off-road letting off the clutch in 4low 1st gear without touching the clutch. When you are in a steep angle, right foot on brake and slowly let the clutch out till it grabs and release the brake. No need to rev high.

Even with the 35's I can readily climb as 20inch boulder etc (several blues at AOAA are pretty bouldery) and simply let the clutch out and idle in 4low 1st gear.

The Rubi transfer case with the 4:1 reduction plus the 5:13 1st gear is really something else when needing to idle up obstacles.

Agree that a regearing or transfer case swap is a good bet of budget allows.

With that said, my jeep is at OK4WD this week getting 4.88 gears installed to take full advantage of my setup. 3 weeks later goes back in for the CFII install to make the setup as bulletproof as I can make it offroad.

good luck

 

[JEEP4U]

After watching some Youtube videos of guys walking right up and on top of tree stumps and big rocks, I realized that is a thing a Jeep can do. I'm new to this game. I'm learning what I can pull off.

There is a parking lot in my neighborhood with a stupid high curb that has destroyed many air dams on many FWD cars. It's pretty stupid for cars, but it seems like a great place to practice rock crawling skills. It's about 20" tall, and it's at about an 88° angle. I have the clearance to go up the curb and over the sidewalk, but I've found that it's actually very hard to do in practice.

I have JLU Willys with stock 32" Firestone Destination MT/2s and the 6MT. In order to avoid stalling on a hill, I have to rev it fairly high, and ease through the clutch release to avoid stalling. My usual driving around a hilly town technique wasn't nearly in the ballpark to get over this obstacle. I bumped into it, bounced off. I stalled out a couple times.

I finally made it over in 4 low, but I was revving to nearly 5,000 to get there, and as I started to go up and over, I saw a huge cloud of smoke. Shit! That was clutch! I am really ashamed of how badly I smoked the clutch. I've driven manual transmissions for decades, mostly in 18-wheelers, and smoking a clutch is BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD m'kay?

So I thought I would ask for advice on what I did wrong. One thing I can think of is that if I had aired down, it would have helped. I obviously wasn't going to air down pulling a silly stunt in a commercial parking lot before climbing a sidewalk onto a paved street, on my way to Harbor Freight to buy trim removal tools for my upcoming Mopar aux switch install.

Maybe I should try this exercise aired down though. This 20" obstacle isn't jack compared to stuff I've seen people clear in these things, but it's a really tall challenge to me. This seems like a good opportunity to get some rock crawling practice in, and if I'm going to destroy a clutch, it's better that it be a clutch that is still under warranty.

Still, I hate smoking a clutch. I know the arguments for automatics on crawls, and torque converters actually do this job better. Even so, people have been rock crawling since the original Willys MB, and I know it can be done. Obviously, my technique is just complete shit, and I need some training.

Front and Rear lockers in 4L will climb that with ease.

 

[Go_Galt]

Non-Rubicon transfer cases and final drive ratios simply *suck* for us manual people doing the type crawling you're describing.

It's all crawl ratio, and yours sucks, unfortunately.

Ideally, a manual vehicle should have the ability to do most slow obstacles at idle. You just engage the clutch and the vehicle crawls over. I spent two weeks in CO and UT with a manual Rubicon with 4.88s, and the number of times I actually needed any throttle application in first was surprisingly low (and this is on Hell's Revenge, Poison Spider, etc).

ETA: My manual Subaru has a crawl ratio of just 16:1 in first (bad), and I have occasionally been fairly abusive to the clutch just to get that thing on a set of ramps for an oil change. Sometimes it's not you- the equipment just isn't adequate for what you want to do.

 

[omnitonic]

It's kind of funny that this old thread resurfaced today. I re-geared to 4.56 since then, and went to 35s. I was parked up against that curb, and I decided to be an obnoxious asshole today, so I fired up the jeep, coasted backwards while slapping her into 4L, then I eased up to that curb, and going over it wasn't shit.

I feel vindicated! My crawl ratio still sucks without a Rubicon transfer case, but it's a lot better with the 4.56 gears. My first gear is so low it's almost a granny low now, and I regularly coast around turns in 3rd gear, if I'm aiming slightly downhill.

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