My mom called me to tell me she couldn't get her Lexus LS430 up her icy driveway so I met her a few miles away and drove her car back to her house. She would follow me driving my car. I jokingly asked her if she remembered how to drive a manual as I knew it had been a few years for her but I didn't think it would be a problem. I got her car up her driveway no problem and visited with her for about an hour.

Upon getting in my car I noticed a burning smell. At first I thought it was electrical until I turned the heat on. HUGE smell of burnt clutch! Driving the 20 miles back to my house the clutch felt weakened and I noticed major chattering due to my brand new flywheel hotspots. If I rode the clutch even slightly such as starting out from a stop, I got chattering that's bad enough to cause vibrations all through the car.

This morning driving to work the clutch felt a bit stronger than last night but of course the chattering and vibrations are still there. My car has 128k miles on it and I knew that a clutch replacement will be in my future, but I was hoping it wouldn't be needed right now. My question is to anyone that's had hotspots on the flywheel before. Do the hotspots ever go away on their own from normal driving?

 

YMMV but when my clutch started chattering it was all down hill from there. My car is now in the garage awaiting parts.

 

Answering your direct question, no, a hot spot will never go away. Its a deformation of the steel at a molecular level, machining it would likely not even fix it unless its insanely light. The thing is, you really have no idea why its doing that, you're just speculating

 

Has no one read the other threads of what happens when you let those F'd up chromosomes called women drive your car?

 

Man, one day and 40 miles later and my garage still smells like burnt clutch tonight. I have no idea what she could have done to burn a clutch like that in only 4 miles!

 

Ouch! I had a similar experience on a previous Max when I let a buddy drive it.
He kept grinding the gears, over-revving and lurching....and for some reason I had a CEL for an oxygen sensor from that point on.Organic clutches have the advantage of recovering better from overheating, if that's any consolation. With your mileage if Mom over-revved she might have overcooked it.

 

Time for new parts to be ordered.

 

Maybe you said it, but did you ever ask your mom what happened dude? Maybe it's not even her fault, simply a coincidence?

 

Ask her and then she'll probably tell you yes it was her at which point you ask her to spring on a new clutch and a lightened flywheel

 

Time for a new clutch and flywheel.

DO NOT have a new clutch installed without replacing the flywheel. The clutch chatter will still be there, and will actually be worse with a new clutch.