NBTBRV8

Well after a disaster of a week on more car fronts than one, I picked up the car tonight. Basically it has cost me over double what it should so far. The dealer agreed once everything was out to wait 5 days for me to get a genuine flywheel from overseas as it was about 1/2 the price they quoted me. I paid extra to get an emergency order done and had it shipped to me in the agreed 5 days. The flywheel turns up I immediately take it to the dealer and they fit it, torque up the new bolts and then find that the pressure plate won't sit flush. Upon closer inspection at some point the flywheel has been dropped on its end and has a flat spot in it, it is stuffed. Had it fitted it would have been even more of a disaster as it would have been wildly out of balance and I would have had to have paid the labour cost to pull it all back out.

I then couldn't wait another 5 days and the dealer and I agree that I now need to pay hoist time as they can't get it off the hoist, so I had no alternative to buy one locally plus another set of bolts at considerable cost and overnight it in. I will send my damaged one back, and hope to at least get some of my money back, we'll see.

In any case, the result. I got in the car and put my foot on the pedal as I normally do and nearly punched it through floor, it is about 1/3 of the weight it was previously. I can't believe how light it is, it is amazing. All the shudder it had it reverse and the minute bit it had in the forward gears is totally gone.

The bite point is in about the same point in the pedal travel, but what I do notice is that the actual clutch bite is much more sharp in the take up.

I will wash up my old parts and take one last lot of photos to post on here in a few weeks time. Glad to have it back, but the bank account has taken an absolute savaging.

911rox

That's just terrible! I too tend to buy my gear from the US to reduce costs and always have similar concerns regarding receiving faulty components with them having to travel so far. It was likely damaged in transit. The courier companies tend to be rather careless at times... I hope you manage to recover something for the damaged unit but thankfully you're back on the road! Get her out there and make up for lost time this weekend NBT!!!

NBTBRV8

Before I put this thread to bed, as promised here are the pictures of the parts that came out of it once cleaned up. As you can see the flywheel has too much deflection ~25mm in an anti-clockwise direction when it should have ~8mm either way of the yellow dot.

NBTBRV8

The clutch plate had 2mm left before the rivets on the flywheel facing side an 1mm on the pressure plate facing side.

NBTBRV8

The fork didn’t look to bad but I replace it anyway.

NBTBRV8

The pressure plate was badly scored and the fingers do look to be angled inwards, but I don’t know if this is any more than a new one as I didn’t have another one to compare it too.

NBTBRV8

The guide tube and control shaft for the fork didn’t look to bad, maybe the shaft was more worn at one end that the other, but I didn’t mic it up.

Gauss

Thanks for updating, NBTBRV8.

Appreciate the time and effort you have taken in sharing the photos.

Mvez

Just got back from inspecting my clutch while the engine is out for RMS, and for 27K miles it looked really good, forgot to take pics though. Still going to replace it with stock .1RS components again, as they are proven to work.

However, you can see a substantial dust/rust buildup on the back side of the pressure plate, which is partly why the pedal pressure increases as wear continues building up, eventually breaking fingers on the PP. My guess is I could've probably gotten another season out of the unit, but it makes no sense to pass up free labor at this point.

The clutch disc and flywheel looked perfectly fine, no cracks anywhere. Cleaned up the flywheel in preparation for the new clutch disc.

The clutch release fork did show some wear though, right at the point of contact on the TO bearing ears. Would be silly to not replace it while I'm in there. I can see how using a brand new TO bearing with a worn release fork could perhaps induce some side loading over time, because the uneven wear pattern of the fork would not be mating perfectly flat with the ears on the new TO bearing. For a couple hundred bucks, it makes sense to replace the fork while you're in there.

If anything, it just let's me know I'm not abusing the car, and not using hoosiers certainly plays a role in decreasing wear as well, so just another reason to use Nittos.