OK, while spagetti sauce simmers, some definitive logic on brake shoe wear vrs clutch.

The clutch disk is roughly the same size as the pressure plate. This is roughly the same diameter as the rotors on your wheel brakes. The pads, however are less than one fourth the surface size of the pressure plate.

Further, the clutch, when operated properly spins over the fiction plate hardly at all. It is for engagment and disengagement of the power thru the drive line.

The rotors on the other hand spin 50 times thru the face of the brake pads during a normal stop from say 40 MPH. Therefore, they are wearing expotentialy faster than the clutch plate would.

This is proven by the dust that lands on your wheels. Generously, we could suggest that what is on your wheels is only would be about 5% of what was actually worn off as you stopped.

As to the brake lights. You can still apply the brakes lightly however at 60 MPH a shift from 6 to 5 (or 5 to 4 in autostick) is hardly dramatic. Flash em if you are concerned about the fool behind you. Should be anyway.

Brakes convert rotary motion to heat. Heat converts your pads to dust. That's how they stop your car. Clutches don't. The pressure plate has considerably more mass, and as such more heat sink properties, than the comparably thinner rotors.

Warping your rotors takes only a couple of panic stops from high speed. Warping your pressure plate is exquisitely difficult. Go ahead and try.

I have a 95 one ton Dodge pickup that pulls a 20 foot trailer half the time. At 210M miles, my original factory brakes passed inspection. I changed them out anyway because they were getting marginal for stopping 17,000 lbs rig and load.

The original clutch is fine at 236M miles although not as crisp as when new. Likely needs an adjustment in the linkage. But, it doesn't slip even with the torque of the diesel. The tranny does double duty all it's life under my foot. It is also fine.


roadster with a stick