when i bought my stang new back in '01 the clutch made a weird scraping noise for a while. it didn't affect anything mechanically, it was just kind of irritating. the first time i took it in they thought it was the throwout bearing, so they replaced it but the noise was still there. i took it in a second time and they replaced the throwout bearing again (yeah, they weren't too bright), and surprise surprise, the noise didn't go away. finally they replaced the entire clutch, which helped the problem a little, but by that point i didn't really care anymore. i just learned to live with it and it eventually went away about six months later. all the other people i've talked to with manual stangs have never had that problem so i don't think its necessarily across the board. other than that, my clutch works fine...