To solve the scalability issue of ad hoc network, a new cluster maintenance protocol is proposed. Clusters may change dynamically, reflecting the mobility of the underlying network. It is therefore difficult to maintain the clusters for efficient routing. For the effective functioning of cluster maintenance the size of the cluster and the cluster head must be chosen carefully in the larger and mobility environment. In this protocol, a node weight heuristic approach is applied with parameters like speed of the node, number of neighbor nodes and associativity. The cluster heads are elected based on these parameters for effective cluster management.