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So my clutch pedal dropped to the floor today in the parking lot of a Walmart. Luckily I just pulled into a spot, but after a $55 tow I discovered the issue. The collar is still locked in the clutch, but the collar pulled out form the bearing. I know because when I move the clutch fork with the pry bar it is pushing the bearing over the collar. So much for using the ACT TOB! Pulling the tranny is not exactly what I wanted to be doing especially since I'm two weeks out from making the new header. Wife doesn't like parking in the driveway!
So my clutch pedal dropped to the floor today in the parking lot of a Walmart. Luckily I just pulled into a spot, but after a $55 tow I discovered the issue. The collar is still locked in the clutch, but the collar pulled out form the bearing. I know because when I move the clutch fork with the pry bar it is pushing the bearing over the collar. So much for using the ACT TOB! Pulling the tranny is not exactly what I wanted to be doing especially since I'm two weeks out from making the new header. Wife doesn't like parking in the driveway!
Originally Posted by letsgetthisdone
Wow. I have never seen that happen. But it looks like I'm going to stop using ACT TOB's now.
This exact thing happened to me about 6 years ago. The ball bearings inside the TOB fell out into my bell housing too. It was before I knew how to install clutches on an evo so I trusted a shop called "Massimo Power" in Corona, CA to do the work. I think they did it right, but used the ACT TOB that came with the kit. The only TOB's I run now are OEM. It also doesn't help that some of the earlier single disk pressure plates from ACT were a little tougher on the TOB due to added tension when pushing the clutch pedal.
Don't worry, and take your time with it. Grab a beer or two, play your favorite music, and knock it out in a weekend. This stuff is a cake walk for you.
I got it all prepped Monday and will drop the sub frame and trans today so not that big of a deal. I hope to have some pictures up this evening of the TOB to see exactly what happened. OEM TOB will arrive tomorrow so I need to have everything ready to go back in quickly. On a positive note the flange arrived yesterday and the 321ss pipes should arrive Friday. I'm going to send ~2ft of straight to MPFAB to fab the collector along with my turbine housing to have it machined so I hope to be ready to fab the header in 2 weeks.
Ugh that sucks about the TOB. My buddies ACT TOB also prematurely failed a few years ago. Visually they look very similar to OEM but I've always opted to purchase a new OEM TOB with every clutch I've done on my car bc a $70 part is less painful to me than dropping the trans.
Ugh that sucks about the TOB. My buddies ACT TOB also prematurely failed a few years ago. Visually they look very similar to OEM but I've always opted to purchase a new OEM TOB with every clutch I've done on my car bc a $70 part is less painful to me than dropping the trans.
It was one of those things where I thought....order OEM or use the one sitting here in the box from ACT. I spoke with ACT today and they were very professional letting me know they will provide credit towards a future purchase. I think I have another idea, but I'll make the proposition after I send the pics.
Sorry to hear about the setback!
Back in the day, ACT TOB’s would fail similarly on DSM’s as well and everyone would scream OEM Only!
Looks like it migrated over to the Evo’s too.
Yep same exact failure I saw; it just falls apart. At least you can wrench so you're only out R&R time vs paying a shop to drop the trans again.
How fresh is the clutch? Perhaps slapping in a new one might not be a bad idea. Id have to scroll back but which unit is that? I had cracked my last ACT clutch disc after minimal use, curious to see what yours looks like under there but perhaps you don't plan to unbolt the PP. Looks like it may have got hot a few times...maybe take a peak?
How fresh is the clutch? Perhaps slapping in a new one might not be a bad idea. Id have to scroll back but which unit is that? I had cracked my last ACT clutch disc after minimal use, curious to see what yours looks like under there but perhaps you don't plan to unbolt the PP. Looks like it may have got hot a few times...maybe take a peak?
Clutch is the full face sprung with highest capacity pressure plate. I came off the same pressure plate, but with 6 puck sprung. I really liked that clutch because it would grab and shifted like butter at 9K, but it didn't like to be slipped so hill starts were a pain and it would chatter. Also, was not the best for stop and go traffic, but manageable.
I don't see signs of heat so not sure what you are referencing. When I put the clutch on the new motor ~1k miles ago it looked just fine. I don't launch the car and I don't bang the gear hard so I'm actually pretty nice to the clutch. Car is making 450ft-lbs@wheels and ACT told me they rate the clutch at 520ft-lbs@wheels. I'm just going to run it since it was working fine and inspected last month prior to install. If I have problems then I will pull the tranny again, but just don't want to spend money at this point since the new turbo setup will cost about $2K even with me doing most of the work.
NVM about the heat Im a moron. Was thinking the blueing was hot spots but on second thought that was silly as there really arent friction surfaces visible there so if it was that discolored you would have bigger issues.
Looking back through my pictures the color I saw was merely the color of the inner portion to the disc...so disregard my newb comment, lol.
However since we are on the topic I attached a picture of my lst clutch disc that didn't last that long. Its an auto-x car but I really dont launch it, rather slip it off the line. I think a lot of this had to do with hitting the rev limiter. Clutch had I wanna say like 10-12k miles on it and as you can see the friction surface isn't even close to the rivets. I'm not exactly sure when it started to fail but first signs were trouble shifting. I only mention this as if you start to have challenges shifting might be worth taking a look at the disc to see if the same thing is happening. FWIW my single disc comp clutch did the same thing in short order.
Thanks for making me spend 5 minutes to check out the disk.
I pulled the cover and heat wise everything looks good, but I have about 0.024" of friction before I get down to the rivet and the overall thickness is ~0.274". I am talking about the flat end of the rivet that is closest to the friction surface in the picture previously posted. I spoke with ACT and they said full wear is ~0.255" so pretty much the disk is done and needs to be replaced. ACT is graciously sending me a new clutch disk for free due to the failure of the throw out bearing so I chose to go back with the 6 puck sprung, which from memory lasted me ~35K miles when I ran it prior to the full face organic. The torque capacity is over 750ft-lbs so I just don't think it would be wise to continue to run the full face organic disk considering I will be going with the larger turbo.
This disk is definitely not a fan on being heavily slipped and takes some getting used to when starting on hills, but manageable. I never had an issue with this disk grabbing and it shifted like butter at 9K rpm on my 2L.
ACT is graciously sending me a new clutch disk for free due to the failure of the throw out bearing so I chose to go back with the 6 puck sprung, which from memory lasted me ~35K miles when I ran it prior to the full face organic. The torque capacity is over 750ft-lbs so I just don't think it would be wise to continue to run the full face organic disk considering I will be going with the larger turbo.
This disk is definitely not a fan on being heavily slipped and takes some getting used to when starting on hills, but manageable. I never had an issue with this disk grabbing and it shifted like butter at 9K rpm on my 2L.
The ACT 6 puck sprung is an excellent disk and is very daily driveable, good choice going back to it. I went from OEM to Act XTSS to Exedy Twin (AMS Push) to Exedy triple (AMS Push) and finally to the ACT 6 puck sprung with extreme pressure plate. The clutch feels great, makes little noise, and is a pleasure to drive on. The exedy twin and triple hate traffic as much as the Act 6 puck sprung. They are just much noisier. They even come with a paper telling you that they will be noisy as hell and that the sound is accepted in the performance industry. No thanks.
The ACT 6 puck sprung is an excellent disk and is very daily driveable, good choice going back to it. I went from OEM to Act XTSS to Exedy Twin (AMS Push) to Exedy triple (AMS Push) and finally to the ACT 6 puck sprung with extreme pressure plate. The clutch feels great, makes little noise, and is a pleasure to drive on. The exedy twin and triple hate traffic as much as the Act 6 puck sprung. They are just much noisier. They even come with a paper telling you that they will be noisy as hell and that the sound is accepted in the performance industry. No thanks.
Thank you for providing your perspective of the Exedy twin and triple vs the ACT 6 puck...makes me feel better about my choice. I need to remove the flywheel this weekend and have it resurfaced and need to clean up the pressure plate with a 2" scotch brite pad on my angle grinder and should be ready to go when the new disk arrives.
I finally got all of my pipes today so the header is getting closer to being started. Once I get the merge collector built and the turbine housing back from MPFab I will start a new thread for this setup. At this point I'm just going to leave the car on the lift and do the turbo swap so not going to dyno the setup again as originally planned.
Last edited by 240Z TwinTurbo; Mar 24, 2019 at 06:33 AM.
Mar 17, 2019, 07:54 PM
