Again, g-d is known for throwing this type of crap my way, so it might not be entirely their fault, but a'd say most of it is.

 

And my transmission is off again. Vibration never went away, so I am now dealing with this.




What do you think is wrong here, flywheel, or pressure plate?

 

If i were to do it again, I'd use the 5 speeds bell housing a ford t5 and a different brand flywheel which I cant think of the name atm. Not the driven man stuff

 

So does it just have a massive amount of chatter? And how did you drill your centering holes

 

You are thinking of Fidanza flywheel perhaps?
Centering holes you can see on each side, towards the bottom of the bell housing, they are 6mm.
It chatters right at the take off point, very typically as cars do when flywheel is warp, or pressure plate perhaps.

 

As I understand it there are no dowels locating the bell housing.
I'm afraid a bolt in an 'ole is not an engineering solution and my bet would be that you've lost concentricity.
I'd consider resetting the bell housing, buying some dowel pins and a reamer to fit and making damned sure nothing can move.

 

I've uses a bolt threaded through both pieces before to line something up. Drill a hole and tap both the inside and outside as one. Put a bolt in and it wont move

 

Nice idea but not technically as sound as a dowel - a bolt is never an interference fit in the threads.
We're dealing with serious torques here and I think it's worth doing properly.

 

As I expected, no one is calling me back from supplier's support dept' (it is just one guy and the owner). So I am getting an itchy finger to call credit card and charge back the hell out of that payment. In case you are wondering, I am slightly dissatisfied with the product...

 

And we have micro measurements of the flywheel.
All withing .04mm on the outer edge of friction surface and .02mm in the mid area of the same.
What do you reckon?

 

There could be a couple of causes.

If I read your numbers correctly, I believe the runout on the flywheel is within acceptable limits (less than .002"), but judging from the pattern, I think you may have inconsistent clamping forces on the pressure plate. If it were a contaminated disk, the heat marks wouldn't be on just one side of the PP and FW, but in this case it looks as though only one half of the assembly is clamping.

Bolts are important. The cover has to be properly clamped to the flywheel, so make sure your bolts are all the same, don't have the wrong shoulder, and don't bottom out. Look at the diaphragm to see if it is even when bolted down. The bolts are particularly important here. Your setup doesn't appear to use dowels, so the bolts must be shouldered to hold the PP in place. If a diaphragm style PP is not on-center, as it rotates the release bearing will deliver inconsistent forces thru the spring diaphragm causing chatter and vibration.

There is a remote possibility that the pressure plate was incorrectly machined but that is rare for one to slip thru.

The only other thing I can think of is to inspect closely to make sure the clutch disc doesn't have any broken springs.

 

All good advice and suggestions, here are my answers:

- Pressure plate was torqued to spec, at 40 lb/sq.ft and seemed in place when I was removing bolts.
- All bolts came from kit manufacturer and did have shoulder to center the PP in place.
- There was no contamination on surfaces whatsoever
- Clutch disk shows no signs of damage and looks perfect from side and both surfaces.

 

This is a long shot, but are the pilot bearing and the transmission input shaft the same diameter? the bearing looks like it is riding in an adapter. Is the bearing centered?

 

Shaft sits in bearing very snug, took me a bit of wiggle to get it in. Adapter was provided by supplier and sized down to fit in my crank by a good friend, with mighty awesome machine tooling.
BTW, I checked input shaft on the gearbox and it does have some play, maybe a .5mm from side to side. I suppose slight play is normal?

 

Some play in the input is normal. That's why it needs to be supported in the pilot.

The input bearing retainer should fit snugly in the bellhousing to center it. Is it the correct size? A GM-sized input will fit but will not be centered in a Ford-sized hole.

Again, I'm just looking to make sure that everything is concentric.

 

It is snug and centered to perfection.
I finally spoke to supplier and they sent me new pressure plate and spacer rings to go behind telescoping throw out bearing assembly. I was short on couple of these rings and had to fabricate a thicker ring with the use of breaking caliper ring of some sort.
The only thing I can think of that would cause such uneven engagement, is if the back of throw our bearing was not sitting a 100% perpendicular against the transmission front wall. However, TOB sits very snug on the input shaft sleeve, so any major askew, due to my custom made spacer rings is not possible.

 

Good luck. If all else is straight and true, then I think I would have to say the PP was probably the culprit. The bad part is that you have to reassemble and test to find out.

Keep us posted.

 

Clutch / flywheel combos have been known to be "incompatible". I. e. the bedding in / transfer of pressure plate material to the flywheel. (And this can be the cause of judder when changing pressure plate type.) Just like brakes in fact, and often mistaken for warped discs.

 

Issue resolved! I just reinstalled gearbox and clutch now is perfect.
I believe the reason for vibration was my custom made, thicker spacer ring under throw out bearing. Supplier did not send me enough of those, so I had to fabricate one with extra thickness. Being slightly off parallel, my custom made spacer was causing TOB to engage at an angle, thus making vibration on release.
I could blame supplier for not supplying enough spacers, or myself for not having machine shop precision, instead I blame BOTH!

 

so did they send more or did you fab up some that worked?

in either case: CONGRATS!

now we want to see more videos!