I have had electric clutches on some JD's and I always engaged them at an idle and then powered up. I always idled them down before disingaging the clutch too, because it acts as a brake. When you engage a clutch at full throttle, it puts a lot of strain on everything, like dropping a clutch on a car or truck at full throttle. It's not necessary to do this. I realize some machines won't have enough power to do this, so speed up the engine enough to engage the clutch without killing it, just like you would a vehicle with a clutch. <p>My DC's have a hand clutch, which I engage at about 1500 RPM's and just gradually tighten it up till the blades are running. I've seen some guys engage DC's at full throttle and they go through a lot of belts. There isn't enough hours in the day to keep up with this fast growing northern grass right now to be changing belts.<p>----------<br><a href="http://pages.prodigy.net/eric.erickson/">Eric@ELM</a><br>