No more Manual Transmission Broncos at the Austin Off-Roadeo

[Lcubed]

off-rodeo NH was reported to have a couple of MT badlands
in one of the threads in this sub-forum

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[kodiakisland]

It really remains to be seen whether it's an issue or not. Toyota used inferior clutches for a long time because they were cheap. Many didn't make it 30K miles. Most likely user error, but who knows at this point.

 

[Superthornbird]

At my days working at a dealership we often had car and trucks with less than 1000 miles with burned up or blown up clutches. So many people knew the concept of driving a manual but have never actually driven or been instructed how to.

 

[Rcarpen22]

off-rodeo NH was reported to have a couple of MT badlands
in one of the threads in this sub-forum

Not today. They had one manual and it was a preproduction that nobody could drive. It was awesome though. Even with the auto I had a blast.

 

[Exomodo]

It is constant low speed and stop and go driving. A clutch doesn't stand a chance, every day for 4-5 hours a day.

What's so difficult about batting the transmission out of gear as you intend to come to a stop? I honestly only use my clutch to get rolling 90% of the time and have only had to do clutches in (then) high horsepower applications where the clutch was inadequate from the jump...

 

[DrewBronc21]

I would think that with the crawl gear this would be less of an issue. When I learned to drive manual, I was told to keep my foot off the clutch pedal unless actually shifting. Pretend it’s red hot and will melt through your shoe and burn your foot. Get in gear and get your foot off it. This will prevent riding the clutch excessively.

I drove stop and go traffic in NYC in my subarus for years and you just learn to creep in 1st so slowly on the verge of stalling lol

 

[BR0NCO]

A slip the heck out of my clutch of my Jeep offroad. It’s got over 80k miles with no end in sight

 

[Efthreeoh]

It is constant low speed and stop and go driving. A clutch doesn't stand a chance, every day for 4-5 hours a day.

Oh BS. I dove a Ford Escort as my courier car for 4 years. 80,000 miles. Clutch was good as gold.

 

[BlueOvalBandit]

It really remains to be seen whether it's an issue or not. Toyota used inferior clutches for a long time because they were cheap. Many didn't make it 30K miles. Most likely user error, but who knows at this point.

What vehicles were they in? I still have have my first new car, a 05 Tacoma. I learned stick in and it now has 170K+ miles on the OG clutch. I learned in the hills around Pomona and Yorba Linda and not going to lie smoked the clutch way harder than I should have a few times early on as people tried to stick their bumpers under mine while stopped on a steep uphills. It's done a ton of stop and go traffic through LA since.

I only recently did the rear brake shoes at 160K. Still had life in them

My minimum expectation is 100K out of a clutch.

 

[BeerForMyHorses]

What vehicles were they in? I still have have my first new car, a 05 Tacoma. I learned stick in and it now has 170K+ miles on the OG clutch. I learned in the hills around Pomona and Yorba Linda and not going to lie smoked the clutch way harder than I should have a few times early on as people tried to stick their bumpers under mine while stopped on a steep uphills. It's done a ton of stop and go traffic through LA since.

I only recently did the rear brake shoes at 160K. Still had life in them

My minimum expectation is 100K out of a clutch.

Agreed. The clutches in Tacomas have been great for a long time. Automatics... Not so much

 

[P52Ranch]

After the first day at the Austin Off-Roadeo, I can understand how inexperienced manual transmission drivers or inexperienced off-road drivers could smoke a clutch very quickly. Lots of waiting for your turn and moving a few feet forward to get to the next instructional obstacle. The process of keeping close contact with the Bronco ahead and making sure the Bronco behind doesn't fall too far back would not do a clutch any favors. It would require an experienced MT drivers with a fair amount of off road experience to keep MT Bronco's out of the shop.

Something else I noticed today:
I had a Sasquatch Big Bend which doesn't have Rock Crawl mode so we set it to Mud/Ruts in 4L. The traction control for Mud/Ruts seems to be less tolerant to wheel spin than Rock Crawl on the Badlands units out there.
If I got some wheel spin in Mud/Ruts, the traction control would kick in and make my driving very jerky. The fix for it was locking a differential to get past the spot with wheel spin. I think the traction control for Rock Crawl was more tolerant for wheel spin. I plan on verifying that tomorrow by grabbing a Badlands and experimenting more.

The Hero switches are aptly named and super intuitive. What an awesome design by Ford. I never locked both differentials and tried to navigate the obstacles without any lockers. There were a few spots where I used a rear locker although with a better line, I probably didn't really need them.

 

[P52Ranch]

The folks next to us in our Off-Roadeo conga line were given a brand new Badlands that was a regular production unit to drive (only had 158 miles on it). It had a blue window sticker with a price tag on it. We were driving a Pre-production Big Bend with a not for sale window sticker.

Has Ford used up their available pre-production units already? It seems a bit crazy that Ford sent a Bronco that could have been sold to the public to an Off-Roadeo.

 

[kodiakisland]

What vehicles were they in? I still have have my first new car, a 05 Tacoma. I learned stick in and it now has 170K+ miles on the OG clutch. I learned in the hills around Pomona and Yorba Linda and not going to lie smoked the clutch way harder than I should have a few times early on as people tried to stick their bumpers under mine while stopped on a steep uphills. It's done a ton of stop and go traffic through LA since.

I only recently did the rear brake shoes at 160K. Still had life in them

My minimum expectation is 100K out of a clutch.

2nd gen Tacoma’s had two suppliers of clutches, one good and one not good. Was luck of the draw which one you got. Fairly well known issue. It either lasts forever or 30K miles depending on which one you got.

There was a TSB for 05-11 models to replace as soon as first sign of slipping. Plenty of ‘12 models got the bad clutch as well. Many failed around 10K. I was lucky to get 50K out of mine.
TSB 0066-11, it now covers 05-13 models. My 2012 was not included when it failed.

 

[MaverickMan]

Anyone starting to suspect it was the manual haters on BSG going and smoking the daylights out of em on purpose. Doing 3th gear starts just to give us manual buyers hard time. I'm not so sure.

 

[Deleted member 3063]

Reserving MT Broncos for those who ordered them as a cure assumes they all actually know how to drive a manual off road. Tooling down to the convenience store isn't the same thing.

That said Ford should have had a local dealership replace the clutches with a power train engineer on site to analyze. Certainly cheaper than transporting them back to Detroit. Real world testing.

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