I have been a mechanic for 12 years @ Holden & Mazda dealerships. I will agree with you that (as customer) would expect that you should get a longer life out of a clutch then 45,000km. I would expect between 70,000 - 100,000kms out of a clutch on a big 4WD. But I will admit that I have only worked on a couple of Patrols (worked on heaps of Jackeroo's, Rodeos, Bravo's & Tribute's) so I don't have a great deal of experience with Nissans. So I am not 100% sure how long Patrol clutch's normally last, but to fail at around 45,000kms I wouldn't be happy as a customer.

Having worked at dealerships and having done too many clutches to remember I know from experience that if the clutch looks like it has failed due to customer abuse / driving habits or it has burnt or worn out that the cost of the repair would be referred back to the customer. Reason being because if the clutch was covered under warranty and then sent back to the car manufacture for further inspection to make sure that clutch warranty claim is a legitimate claim (e.g. - Holden). Holden head office would get back to the dealer after having looked at the parts and would refer the cost of the parts and labour back to the dealer if Holden head office felt the reason for the component failure was due to the customers driving habits or wear and tear.

I hope you can see from my post as to why the dealer won't accept responsibility for a clutch repair until they have the customer's authorization to remove the gearbox so they can inspect the clutch assembly and make a diagnosis on what has caused the component to failure. On most cases (at the 2 dealerships I worked at) when the clutch has failed for whatever reason and the customer would like to have the repair covered under warranty, the service manager and workshop foreman and will have the final say if the repair will be covered or not. Because if the dealership does try and make a warranty claim for the total costs of the repair and then 3 weeks later head office comes back to the dealership after looking at the component failure and say they are not going to cover the repair under warranty, then the dealership has to pay for the entire repair.

The main clutch failures that I have seen (other from customer abuse, driving habits and being worn or burnt out) is the pressure plate fingers failing. Which I have seen many times on the Holden Commodores with the gen 3 engine with the manual transmission, and at the dealership I worked at I can't remember a single time that this repair wasn't covered under the manufactures warranty.

But I will have to pull you up on some comments you have made which are incorrect. Doing a clutch job on any big 4WD is not an easy job; don't think for 1 minute that every dealership has the correct tools for gearbox repairs. I remember when I was doing clutches on Jackeroos/Rodeos/Suburbans we didn't have a good stand to hold the g/box with, when we where ready to take the g/box out on the big 4WD there would be about 4 people assisting in removing and refitting the g/box (and this goes for a lot of dealerships, because a lot of my friends are also mechanics at different dealerships). Dealerships don't like spending money on workshop tools unless it is absolutely necessary.

A little over 8 months ago, our Renault kept popping out of 5th gear when driving along a highway. We took it straight to the Renault dealership and 8 months later, it is still sitting at the dealership worth absolutely nothing. They initially provided a quote of $3200 to fix the 5th gear (in which I paid almost $200 to receive that indicative quote). I gave the go ahead to get it fixed only to be told once it was up on hoists that it needed a whole new gearbox amongst numerous other things. The costs are excessive, and they have shown absolutely no empathy at all. My last discussion with the dealership was that it would cost me $6000 for a new gear box, labour of $121 per hour and then there would be quite a few extra costs on top of that.

We had another mechanic look at it, and he said the stone guard under the car was missing, and as such internal damage to the motor and gearbox had been caused. I raised this with Renault and they advised the stone guard falling off was common and that this would not cause the problem of the gearbox. They also advised that the gearbox was a common problem. I cannot understand how we did not notice any oil leaking (we parked it on a light colour driveway) and no lights flashed on the dashboard. Apparently the other damage is also quite significant and the external mechanic said that a lot of the issues should have been picked up in a service.

Our car is out of warranty, has just over 100,000 kms and has always been serviced. I just cannot stomach having to pay at least $9000 (that's the current estimate to get it back on the road) when the car is barely 5 years old. The external mechanic recommended we just sell it to the wreckers as it is basically worthless.

Surely there is something we can do? To be told by Renault that this is common is just not good enough. We bought the car on the proviso it would be a reliable family car and it's anything but. The mechanic told us we are lucky we were not killed. This all happened after we sent it in last year for a recalled part to be fitted. I can't help but that triggered everything to go wrong, but of course the service department of the dealership will not accept any responsibility.