I have a 1996 camry 'dx 5-spd. I have 248+K miles. I am on my original
clutch. I bought the car with 11k miles, Around 180k has been mostly
highway. In the past 2 years or 50k or so I have been driving less
highway and more stop and go. I am wondering if anyone knows what the
life span of these are? I understand driving habits play a factor.
Would anyone know the cost to replace this clutch? I've been very
fortunate with this car having to replace an O2 sensor and the axles
and not much more than normal maintainace. Thanks in advance

"steve-o" <igt123@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:1141757710.180597.271880@z34g2000cwc.googlegr oups.com...
I'm in a similar situation, only mine has 173,000 kays (108,000 miles) and
has done a lot of stop and go driving.

You can get some idea of how worn the clutch is by noting how high the
clutch pedal is before the car starts to move. The higher the pedal, the
more worn the clutch is. The other method, which is a little rough on the
clutch, is to select a gear which is too high for the speed of the car eg
4th gear while the car is doing 15 mph,..then let the clutch up while
applying plenty of throttle. This tests the pressure-plate's amount of
"grab" left. If the engine flares before bogging down, then the clutch is on
its way out. If the engine bogs down immediately, the clutch has a fair bit
of life left in it.

Replacement is not as straight forward as an in-line engine and transmission
configuration. I'd allow for at least 50% more labor in the cost.

Jason

Thanks for that info, I'll go through the motions you outlined. The car
has 248,678 thousand miles on it.