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Clutch Suggestions/Advice

You have a problem elsewhere

You have a problem elsewhere

If you have 'blown' two clutches in that short of time you may well have a problem elsewhere. Unless you are merciless and hammer your car constantly, yes I read the part on the second clutch, installation issues might be the root cause as might the flywheel, pressure plate, throwout bearing, pilot bearing, or trans input shaft. Make certain all of those are to spec and true.

Others have 3l and don't seem to have a problem with clutches until they start hammering on them.

The cheap old man's fix for this would be to make certian everything is right and then drive like a person who wants the car to last. Easy starts, easy stops. Ever wonder why that 80 year old man down the street is driving a 30 year old car that looks like new?
 
CSVT#49 said:
I'm not in this forum enough and didn't see this until now... and I know this is an old post... but one question rexxdoggy... did you have the flywheel resurfaced by a reputable place? This is a dual step flywheel and requires special resurfacing. If this wasn't completed properly you could burn through clutches just as your saying very easily. If I were you I would buy a NEW flywheel and a NEW OEM clutch set and install that. I willing to bet money that if you have just a mild 3L you'll be fine. If not feel free to step up to a stage1 SPEC or a Clutchnet (highly recommend). I burnt through my first SPEC stage1 clutch in 14k miles, but I believe the flywheel wasn't properly resurfaced. Second time around I put a new SVT flywheel on with another SPEC stage1 clutch and had no problems what so ever until I pulled the engine for my 3L turbo build, which was 26k miles later.
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What do you mean dual step? I did take it to a good machine shop. EVERYONE I asked and, that's quite a few people, said to take it to them.

andreslobo said:
If you have 'blown' two clutches in that short of time you may well have a problem elsewhere. Unless you are merciless and hammer your car constantly, yes I read the part on the second clutch, installation issues might be the root cause as might the flywheel, pressure plate, throwout bearing, pilot bearing, or trans input shaft. Make certain all of those are to spec and true.

Others have 3l and don't seem to have a problem with clutches until they start hammering on them.

The cheap old man's fix for this would be to make certian everything is right and then drive like a person who wants the car to last. Easy starts, easy stops. Ever wonder why that 80 year old man down the street is driving a 30 year old car that looks like new?
Click to expand...

The first one was definitely my doing, I was snatching gears, driving like an idiot. Now, the last clutch, I babied the crap out of it. NEVER snatched a gear, always feathered it in when I wanted to 'shift fast'. This installation I made sure was in spec.
 
dual step flywheels have the friction surface that the clutch actually sits against and the stepped up mounting ring that the pressure plate mounts to. if the shop only machined the friction surface then the gap between the 2 friction surfaces (the flywheel and the pressure plate) would be larger than spec and will cause problems, such as quickly burning up the clutch. since the gap is too large there isnt enough pressure on the clutch disc for it to grab properly and it slips. the shop needs to take off the same amount of material from both the friction surface and the stepped pressure plate mounting ring.
 
Oh okay, that's what I thought. Well, it definitely was. Because it looked freshly machined when I got it back compared to when I dropped it off. So that's a little stress off my back.
 
rexxdoggy said:
Oh okay, that's what I thought. Well, it definitely was. Because it looked freshly machined when I got it back compared to when I dropped it off. So that's a little stress off my back.
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So both surfaces were freshly machined or just the one? What did you pay to have it resurfaced? If it was anything less the $50 you probably didn't get a dual step resurfacing completed. Most places charge in upwards of $75 to have a dual step flywheel resurfaced...
 
Both surfaces were freshly machined, the friction surface and the pressure plate mounting surface was. That's the first thing I noticed when I first got my box back, the PP mounting face was nice and shiny. Stepped pressure plate mounting ring, whatever you wanna call it. But yeah, both of those were machined.
 
CSVT#49 said:
So both surfaces were freshly machined or just the one? What did you pay to have it resurfaced? If it was anything less the $50 you probably didn't get a dual step resurfacing completed. Most places charge in upwards of $75 to have a dual step flywheel resurfaced...
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my local machine shop does a stepped flywheel for $40 plus $1 for every dowel pin (3 in the case of the Contour). he only charges $25 for a standard flywheel. its a small 1 man operation though so he can afford to charge less.
 
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