Originally Posted by JARblue

Inevitable? Yes. If you put enough miles on the car, they will fail. How many miles before that happens is the real question. Based on my research on the matter, it seems that hard launching and probably poor clutch operation are the main causes of CSC failure. For every person that had theirs replaced <30K miles, I wouldn't be surprised if there are several who got 75K miles or more out of it. Of course, I don't know the actual numbers. The best you can do with the OEM is have your CSC last as long as your clutch and get both replaced at the same time.

I changed out my CSC after 50K miles as a precaution. I drive my car pretty hard but I'm not excessive with it. With less than 10 laps on a track and less than 5 hard launches over 3K RPMs in it's lifetime, I think can say I've had good success with the OEM CSC. But rather than tempt fate, I just went with one of the aftermarket solutions. My goal was to never have to worry about the CSC again.

The CMC seems to be pretty crappy, too. The two parts are about the same price, but the labor on the CMC is soooooo much easier (or cheaper if you pay someone else). I kept my old CMC and will probably buy a $20 rebuild kit to fix it up before my new one eventually fails.