Assuming that a car is driven in the same manner in terms of being sympathetic to the clutch (no racing starts, no clutch slipping, no sitting on hills using the bite point rather than the handbrake etc.), do you reckon the DMF on a car with an intrisically smooth engine will last longer? The DMF is partly designed to absorb the vibrations of a an inherently rather rough engine (lets say a 4 pot diesel, for the sake of argument).
The 2.2 PSA unit in our Freelander 2 is pretty smooth. Had a '59 plate Mondeo 1.8 TDCi (125ps) as a hire car the other day. Magazines praise the smoothness of the 2.0 TDCi 140ps unit, but this 1.8 engine was pretty coarse and noisy. To be fair, I suspect that it wasn't in the best of health, as there was a really rough, eneven beat to the engine at around 1,250 rpm... Got my wondering whether an engine like this (or perhaps the economical, torquey but fairly rough VAG TDi PD units) would give a DMF more of a hammering than say a Renault DCi, BMW 4 pot or PSA HDi unit?
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DMF life - effects of smooth v rough engi..