This is a cautionary tale...
My buddy bought a brand new manual Sapphire Blue '15 Mirage DE during the 'Mirage-a-Palooza' rebates in the spring of 2016. He drove it briefly, then gave it to his wife to drive after his knee began to bother him. He has done floor installation his whole life, and his knees ain't what they used to be.
She put about 50,000 miles on it, and loved it. Her teenage son Jake was driving a 2002 Toyota Sienna van, and this van was wrecked a few weeks ago. I never heard exactly what happened, but I figured it was wrecked because of 'teenager stuff'. It was decided that he would inherit the Mirage.
Last week, he was trying to accelerate onto a freeway on ramp when suddenly he had a problem. The engine would rev, but the car would not accelerate. Despite his best attempts, he could not get the car moving. It was stuck on the side of the road, and the car had to be towed back to his house.
My buddy asked me to look at the car since I was familiar with this model (he bought the car on my recommendation). At first, he thought his son had broken the clutch cable or damaged the transmission by being an idiot...more 'teenager stuff'. I asked him how the clutch pedal felt, and he said it felt fine. I asked if the car would go into gear normally, and he said the shifter felt fine...the car just wouldn't move when the clutch was released. On Tuesday evening I went and checked the car out. I had a pretty good idea of what the problem was, but decided I should confirm it nonetheless.
First, I wanted to make sure the car really wouldn't move when I tried to drive it. I started it, put it in first, released the clutch pedal, aaaaand...it just barely crept forward. I was able to feather the clutch pedal and gas pedal enough to do a very slow lap around the cul-de-sac he lives on. I popped the hood to see if there was free play on the clutch release lever.
There was NONE. The clutch was way out of adjustment. It was so bad, in fact, that I had a hard time even turning the adjustment nut by hand. I thought I was going to have to get a pair of channel-lock pliers or something. But I finally got it to turn and set the right amount of free play on the clutch lever. I hoped the damage to the friction disc, pressure plate, and flywheel was not bad, and and that an adjustment would set things right.
No such luck. The clutch is burned out! I tried to relay to my friend that the cause of this problem was not 'teenager stuff'...but a simple lack of adjustment on the clutch cable. Knowing his son, he wasn't buying it...
Moral of the story: KEEP THOSE CLUTCH CABLES PROPERLY ADJUSTED! You want about 5-7mm of free play on the clutch lever, which translates to about an inch of free play on the pedal.
Don't end up like Jake.