The Mystery of the Clutch

My dear fellow Malayseans, I am here today to tell you all about the CLUTCH . Yes, the humble, lowly left pedal of the car. I'm going to tell you all about how it's OVERWORKED and UNDERAPPRECIATED. Firstly. When do we use the clutch? When we change the gear, and when we step unto the brakes and before we stop right? What happens if we don't, then? The car stalls. Right? Now that was exactly what happened to me today during my driving lesson. I'm rushing my lessons to take the test on the 28th morning right before i go back to "our beloved place of study". By the way. I saw Teck Leong driving up the hill today. He's fast. I've only done the routes and parking. Anyway. Back to the mystery of the clutch. I've never been an avid fan of the clutch. For one, i don't know exactly what it does and how it is "ever so important" as my instructor keeps informing me. I have no idea what happens under all that steel of the front carbody. So I assume it "holds unto the gear" as my instructor tells me. And under that wrong assumption i use the clutch during the parking lesson for an entire hour. And for the rest of the lessons anyway. But today. Curiousity got the better of me when i stalled twice, once at the traffic light and another in front of my house. (Boy was that embarassing) And I really didn't know why i stalled. I knew it was because i didn't press the clutch all the way down, but what's the logic behind it? Thus. I went on a quest to seek for enlightenment on this frustrating issue (more like to find out why i'm not as good behind the wheel as i should be by now). And voila! This site told me all about it. "The clutch disc is actually a plate that connects the engine to the wheels. In a car, you need a clutch because the engine spins all the time and the car wheels don't. In order for a car to stop without killing the engine, the wheels need to be disconnected from the engine somehow. The clutch allows us to smoothly engage a spinning engine to a non-spinning transmission by controlling the slippage between them. When your foot is off the pedal, the springs push a pressure plate against the clutch disc, which in turn presses against the flywheel(on the engine). This locks the engine to the transmission input shaft, causing them to spin at the same speed." Duh! So when you press the clutch pedal right before you stop, you actually disconnect the engine from the wheels so that even when the brake stops the wheels, the engine's still on. (and not stall, in my case) And when you start off you gotta let go of the clutch slowly and not suddenly cause when you jerk it away suddenly, the engine will die off before even having the chance to run smoothly! And. we should step on the clutch pedal all the way instead of halfway cause allowing it to slip against the flywheel (on engine) will cause it to wear off faster! SO as we all see, the clutch is indeed an overworked and underappreciated component of the car. WOw. Are we all enlightened or what? NOTE: this post is republished in www.lavished.blogspot.com under my directions. Cheers. Have a nice day!