So this is my first car with a stick shift and I'm a little naive. I bought my '02 with 36,000 miles on it back in April and I'm wondering when a clutch typically goes out and how to tell when it's on its way out before I get caught in a bad situation.

Can someone teach me the basics?

 

put your car in 6th gear at a low speed, like 30 or so and accelerate, if the clutch slips then you know it's going

 

One of the best ways to tell is to hop on the interstate with another S2000 next to you cruising at around 50 MPH. The other S2000 should also be a AP1 with a good clutch. Put both cars in 4th gear and floor it to 80 MPH. If you both stay nose to nose, then you're in good shape. If the other car gets way ahead of you, then you've got a problem.

The first signs of a worn clutch is power slippage or flat spots in the power band. This is tough to tell when your clutch first starts going out, but gets more and more noticeable down the road - basically you don't accelerate as fast above 6,000 RPM, and as time goes on the power loss at lower RPM points gets worse.

Most of what you're going to feel on a worn clutch is in the gas pedal and not necessarily the clutch pedal.