Premature clutch wear?

[dude772]

Is it possible to fry a clutch early by getting really thick mud on it?

My thinking here is that the mud acts as a lubricant and lets the clutch slip while your trying to get unstuck. Then allows the clutch start burning up even if you dont beat it up to badly.

I ask because i just put a brand new clutch in when i did my manual transmission swap a few weeks ago, and i got stuck in a nice deep mud hole and personally i thought i was taken it easy. I tried for about 45 seconds to get it out and gave up, called my buddy with a winch and let it sit there for about an hour and a half then winched it out/ drove it out, that took about 20 minutes to a half an hour including hooking his truck up to a tree and his winch to my truck.

Right near the end of getting the truck out the clutch started to smoke like crazy! and now out of the blue ive got no clutch left at all truck wont budge.

 

[Jspafford]

Getting it wet at all will damage the clutch.

Couple the damp disk with the extra strain of trying to get the wheels spinning and the truck moving.... Yes, an inexperienced person can fry a clutch in under a minute.

Good news, at least you know how to do it now.

 

[dude772]

haha i can have the trans in an explorer out and back in in under 3 hours by now, this is going to be the fourth time ive had the transmission out of that damn thing!

Im not going to say im the best driver out there, but i like to think that im not a complete f***ing moron and did the best i could not to go hard on it. mostly cause the voice in the back of my head was screaming "$200 CLUTCH YOU IDIOT!!!"