need major help with clutch problems

[spidy3]

from the beginning....

did motor rebuild year and half ago. installed SBR clutch kit with ACT flywheel. from day one clutch had problems disengaging. about a year and maybe 2k miles later (when i got the funds) I brought car to shop and found out spring came out of clutch disc (not warrentied). So I have to spend about $1k for new clutch kit w/ flywheel and labor. Went with ACT 2600, had dealership install it. Clutch worked/felt good until 2 months later when driving car would just rev. Brought car to a different shop and had trans taken out. Found out the whole outside friction surface got ripped off of the inner circle of the clutch disc.
Another $1k later I had a spec stage 3 clutch put in and not even a month later im having issues with that. Its making a very loud squealing noise when I push the clutch pedal in and the noise stops when the pedal is up (clutch engages).

I never abused any of these clutches either. thats out of the equation because my car is hardly tuned at all so I cant drive it hard.

Any Ideas before I have to bring it to another shop???!!! I NEED HELP!!!!


- Dom

 

[TwoLiterLaser]

The squeeling when the clutch pedal is depressed is the throw-out bearing. You need to replace it.

I do not know why those clutches would die on you like that. Just because your car is not really "tuned" does not neccessarily mean you are not launching the crap out of it and causing those clutches to bust.

Or you just got really bad luck and purchased some bad clutches. Good luck.

 

[chaclark83]

I agree completely. shops might not have installed them correctly. Anyway twoliter hit it head on.

 

[laserspeeddemon]

Yes, it is the shops fault and I will tell you why.

I took ACT head to head on the verge of a class action law suit a few years ago when a mass amount of their costumers were having this same problem. Clutches would blow up. The threw out some BS excuse about a design flaw that Mitsubishi caused in the production of these cars. In the end I put their excuse to test and found that they were in fact correct. You see, our transmissions are held to the engine with only 4-bolts. Not even my Honda uses ONLY 4 bolts. But the design is not flawed after all. Rather the method of their design isn't commonly known.

On the bottom to bolts, there are 2 dowel pins. Everyone calls them dowel pins, even ACT and Mitsubishi. What they really are, are alignment sleeves. These two sleeves are vital to keep the input shaft perfectly lined up into clutch disc. Without these the top of the engine tends to to lean in more then bottom when you are bolting the transmission back to the engine. This slight misalignment, which couldn't be more then 1 mm, cause extreme stress on the clutch disc center hub. The hub will bend. The slightest bend on the center hub will cause the springs to move. The additional vibration will increase the rate at which the hub bends, which allow the springs to move more, which causes the bending process to increase (you see the cycle here). Eventually the center hub will break completely away from the outer component.

So what does these pins or sleeves look like.

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Most of you shops are going to tell you that they are not important, but again I tested ACTs accusations and it held true. The first shop screwed you when the knocked these sleeves out taking your transmission out. And all of the other shops, especially the dealership, screwed you when they installed the new clutches (and therefore the reinstalled the transmission) and did not notice they were missing.

As for the squeeling, my clutch did the exact same thing when my clutch died because when I released pressure off the clutch disc (pedal depressed) a small piece of the spring that had got caught between the clutch disc and the pressure plate these caused it to rub against the fingers of the pressure plate. When I engaged the clutch (pedal up) the fingers would wedge the spring fragment against the clutch disc so tightly that it could no longer move and therefore stopped squeeling. However, the throw-out bearing is a more likely caused.


Here is a picture of my pressure plate where you could see spring was rubbing.

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[spidy3]

well I found out that the (i'll be nice) idiots that put my clutch in the last time, they didnt tighten any of the bolts and didnt put the bolt the attaches the trans to the engine in thats behind the xfer case. so basically there was a nice gap between the engine and trans and the back side and the trans had atleast an inch of movement. What got messed up that I know about right now is that my starter is shot because it wasnt hitting the teeth on the flywheel right and the flywheel teeth are a little messed up. Owner of shop is calling me tomorrow and I will be demanding they buy replacement parts for what got messed up due to their ignorance. Hopefully nothing happened to the clutch itself or the crank or anything.

As for me "launching the crap out of my car when its not tuned" doesnt happen. Im pretty sure that if you spent thousands and thousands of dollars trying to make your car like new and upgrading everything in the engine bay and it knocks at 12psi that you wouldnt beat the crap out of it either. Esp since the first clutch I had put in had disengagment problems from day one. And its not like Ive had alot of time to work on the engine part or "tuning" since my car has ran normal with no clutch problems for about 2 of the past 20 months, if that.
And its sad that even if I did drive my car hard that with the very poor tune it has right now it might have 300hp if im lucky and those clutches are suppose to be for cars with around 400hp. I cant imagine them in a car that pushes the rating limit