welcome back everybody mark with exotic car play place here to talk about the
top five things clutch related you need to know about a 13 year old supercar
like my e60 m5 over here well 13 years old because this one's an 06 this would
apply to any so 7s 8's 9s and 10s as well so let's go for a ride so before we
get started everybody before we get rolling in this discussion please make
sure you give my channel a like and subscribe if you haven't already
subscribed please do and if you have thanks for coming back everybody
so let's get rolling some of the top 5 things the first one of course is how
many miles do you get out of a clutch number two is we want to talk about the
launch control and the s6 mode as well the third thing is the clutch
replacement cost the fourth thing is aftermarket options for clutches and the
fifth thing happens to do with SMG adaptations a special little topic very
technical there but will touch on a very lightly r2 so the first thing we want to
talk about is clutch life how many miles can you expect from a clutch well in the
early days when people didn't really understand fully
you know how much abuse and what it took to drive these cars properly there was a
lot of clutches burning out at 30 to 40,000 miles but often most clutches
generally lasted in that 70 to a hundred and ten thousand mile range if you drove
it moderately yeah you use it you drive in a spirited fashion but you definitely
took care of it and you did the right things and didn't abuse it all the time
so there's many factors that go into this do you drive in an automatic mode
do you drive it in manual mode what ship speed do you operate it at
launch control operations how many and you drive typically in stop-and-go
traffic these all have very large impacts on the life of that clutch so
basically as a rule of thumb for this my best recommendation for it law extending
the longevity of the of the clutch on these cars is drive it in medium speed
so about s3 but of course drive it in a manual in the manual operation when you
operate the car in automatic it tends to do a little bit more slipping the manual
operation in speed three is most happy place if you go to slower
shift speed what ends up happening is the car takes up too slowly it slips the
clutch a lot more on acceleration and as well if you dial it up to aggressively
say s5 or s6 that becomes a very abrupt start a very abrupt shift and often
takes a toll on the clutch because it's shifting very hard and it becomes a lot
more shocking to the driveline so the second thing you need to know about
these clutches is two special features one being launch control and the other
one being s6 mode they both have a very significant impact directly on the
clutch life of the car the launch control has a direct impact by when you
activate launch control what that it really effectively does is accelerates
revs the engine up to a preset value of RPM engine speed and then followed by a
quick dump of the clutch resulting in either tire smoke and brisk acceleration
or clutch smoke in which case that's why we're talking about this today
now the other topic is s6 that is the s6 modes you can only activate when you
disable the DSC so the s6 mode we talked about as well has a negative impact on
the car's clutch life and that is because s6 is the sixth dynamic sporting
shift speed setting that you can alter or you can activate but you can only do
it under certain conditions and that's why they leave that as not a default
function but something you have to make a definitive conscious effort to do to
operate and how you operate s6 is what you effectively do is you
press the DSC button which effectively disables your traction control that once
that's taken place then you adjust your toggle your shift speeds all the way to
the right until you get that sixth bar that sixth bar is only available when
you disable traction control so there's two negative consequences in activating
a six number one you lose traction control so it's great for a track but
the other one is obviously it's detrimental to clutch life and therefore
should only be utilized when you're really really trying to do extract that
last bit of ounce of performance out of the car so the third thing that you need
to know about the clutches on these cars how much do they cost
well these cars would you talk about parts and labor and we'll talk about
specifically only the stock components we won't get into the aftermarket stuff
yet under stock components you can expect a tab of about two thousand five
hundred to about three thousand dollar tab for a replacement clutch on the e60
m5 now keep in mind of course some people you get you get the car under the
knife and you have this feeling that you want to cut to the chase and do it on
the least amount of money as possible but I would highly recommend that when
you do the clutch change don't forget to make sure the flywheel is in good shape
and more importantly of course check to make sure your throw all bearing is
replaced as well and any other bushings that may be applicable to this
installation don't skimp on that otherwise you might be going back in a
lot sooner than you had hoped so the four thing you have to know about these
clutches are yes in fact there are aftermarket options for this now you
gotta expect usually in the aftermarket they're not in these kind of parts on
these kind of cars you're not typically expecting job or low cost parts in this
case aftermarket usually means performance related they want to talk
about cars or parts that I'll add performance capabilities to
these cars and that is what we're talking about here so the m5 here as an
aftermarket option to say CNS racing for example has an option to twin disc
Kevlar and carbon graphite combination that has a total clamping force of over
1200 foot-pounds of torque so that far exceeds anything that you would expect
from a stock clutch this here might actually be a great option if you're
looking at upping the ante for horsepower you want to do the stroker
kit you want to do a supercharger kit I would recommend going at one of the
racing options for clutches don't necessarily stick with the stock you
might be sorely disappointed with the clutch cake clamping capability on that
car so if you are bumping the power dramatically look at the after market
and CNS Racing has one for about thirty two hundred dollars for the parts so
it's not inexpensive however if you need the performance it's certainly there and
the added bonus is it will operate and drive very similarly to a stock clutch
configuration and therefore you don't have to worry about judder and pick up a
lot of Kevlar clutches I know on the Lamborghinis and whatnot there's options
some are better than others No - Kevlar setups are the same some are very jerky
and you activate the clutch and will surge on you or it won't do anything at
all and so some Kevlar clutches are very aggressive so you have to do your
research on anything and that same thing goes here for the m5 because like I said
some will just grab and launch and other ones will jerk you to death and other
ones will drive very similarly to stock so what you want is a stock feel that's
ultimately what you're looking for with better clamping force so the fifth thing
you have to understand about these clutches is sometimes it's not as simple
as just putting a standard clutch back in or an aftermarket clutch sometimes
their settings that have to be altered sometimes you have to make adjustments
for changes in the system it doesn't always necessarily operate exactly as
you would expect it to and there for there is a little thing called SMG
adaptations and so there's software utilized by people who typically know
how to operate this equipment that can run through and make adjustments make
settings in the software that affect the way the car picks up does it hold or
release it does it jutter too much on a take off these are all factors that you
have to consider and sometimes these settings have to be changed if the
clutch doesn't operate exactly as you would expect it to you need to sometimes
make software changes to allow for these impacts these positive impacts on
performance so there's like I said there's certain software that you need
to utilize to make these changes and there's a lot of people if you want more
information on that of course I can share and days to come of course however
in the interim there is information on blogs certainly on the forums that get
into a lot more detail about how this whole system works but at the end of the
day if your clutch is brand-new you've just put in a new clutch and the car is
not working properly maybe you need to check some of the settings on your car's
programming for the SMG 3 transmission so everybody as always its mark you're
signing out don't forget to subscribe to the channel also like comment and share
this information with your friends out there I'd love you guys to come back for
more I want to see more and more you guys engage in my channel I love sharing
this info with you guys and I'd really love to see you on the next one
talk to you soon everybody see you then bye-bye
you