Just wanted to post my review of Fidanza's Lightweight Flywheel.

I've had the flywheel and a ACT 6-puck clutch installed in my 2003 Evolution for about 1 1/2 years with over 12,000 miles logged as my Daily Driver. I've also had the car at the drag strip on 2 occasions and a day at the road course at the Nashville Speedway. Car ran great until after the road course event and the car started making some strange noises and became difficult to shift, figured we had some possible motor and transmission problems till we opened it up and found this





The flywheel bolts appeared to have lost tension due to the warping of the flywheel under load. From what I can tell the aluminum was hot enough to soften and deform and over time with out the proper tension the flywheel bolts loosen. All of that action also left aluminum on my crank.

I did contact Fidanza and their response was:
" I showed the ics to the owner and Engineer and both are in agreement that this appears to have come loose on the crank.. not melted. The constant motion is what made the aluminum bond to the crank in this fashion. The only thing I may be able to do for you is offer a discount on a new flywheel. I could probably give you one for around $***. Let me know what you decide.

Thank You,"

I wish I could believe that but had the flywheel failed with in the first few months I could believe the flywheels bolt had loosen due to a bolt torque issue.

Unfortunately I can not recommend the flywheel to anyone unless it is a race only vehicle (where your going to be able to have it a part for inspection) or in some application that isn't going to see any high heat loading.
If you have one in your car i would be careful how much heat you put into it as this could happen to you as well.

-James

 

I've seen this before, even on steel flywheels from oem to aftermarket manufactures. If the flywheel to crank bolts are not torqued properly if oem, or not in the right tq'ing sequence using arp etc... and no medium thread locker is used this result can happen. Steel, aluminum it doesn't matter, this is called fretting, two materials transferring material from vibration. If there is a weak point in the bolts from either the manufacture or from installation there will be no mitigation between the flywheel and crank to prevent this from happening.

It of course has to be a perfect storm for this to occur as it happens very very very rarely. In any cases I have seen we just bought whatever the customer had originally, new bolts, check the crank threads etc... get it all cleaned up... install properly to spec and it never came back.

 

Just out of curiosity how many miles should this failure manifest itself in your opinion?
I mean I've been running around on this setup for a while with two drag events and I've heard nothing out of the car.
I run a road course event and the thing comes apart suddenly doesn't sound like bolt problems. If it was fretting I would expect there to be some signs of an issue.
-James

 

had the same flywheel combo'd with the 3.2 clutch lasted 5k miles.. had to replace the clutch.. flywheel still in and holding at the momemtn.. bout 10k miles so far..

 

What went wrong with the clutch?
-James

 

had this flywheel for a long time now and no problems here