Thread: Tranny blew up.....

You are extremely lucky in one regard. Once Jim Wolf's forensic team got a chance to examine the remains of my clutch, it turned out the pp housing had cracks in it. Something about the metal microstructure carbonsomething technobabble blah, blah, blah. In any case, once there were small cracks, it was only a matter of time until failure occurs. In my case it was catastrophic and took a basketball sized chunk of the transmission with it. If that had happened while driving down the road, I shudder to think of the other possibilities.
In my VE'd dd, I picked up an sr16 tranny with a little over 30,000 miles on it. My beast VE has a B15 box. Both are improved over the B13/B14 boxes that are readily available.

the ring on the "fingers" is normal for metal to metal contact from the TO bearing.

That metal wire looks like a gear selector collar retainer. They are inside the gear selector collars that the selector forks actuate and they act as a spring (two per collar) to help center the collar in the "neutral" position. We'll see though.

that clutch looks real bad. the discoloration on the sprung section shows extreme heat. also the friction surface on the flywheel looks bad and should be replaced. the part your mechanic is pointing at is the guide for the t/b. it should be cleaned and and regreased. make sure the guide is smooth with no scratches. It also looks like the t/b was riding on the pressure plate which would explain the color of the clutch disk. shawn was does the under side of the pressure plate look like. I bet its hot spotted and glazed.

What I want to know is why our OEM Nissan clutches will outlast just about any aftermarket option. Personally I've had the same area of the clutch break completely off (the edge where the finger is pointing to the crack in the picture) and I've seen other people have the same issues. I forget what mileage I put down exactly on my "stage 3" clutchmasters clutch but it was on an N/A engine and not even close to 15k miles. The clutch face wasn't worn down, the only part that failed was the part that the finger is pointing to. Why can't ACT, Clutchmasters, or any other aftermarket clutch company make a decent clutch that will last as long as OEM Nissan? And I'm not even talking about the friction material, I'm talking about the freaking frame of the clutch disc.

It's a crapshoot when you buy a clutch, you can hope for the best, but it seems 50% of the time they're going to fail.

I am not sure why, maybe I just expect that a performance clutch isn't going to last as long as a stock clutch. I believe Exedy makes the clutch for Nissan, I know Nissan does not make their clutches in house. I am going to try an exedy puck setup next time. I can say that I have had a Clutchmasters stage 3 clutch back in 2001 and it lasted over 20k with no issues. Then the car got smashed so i couldn't tell you how it went after that. I have seen ACT's last a while, while some will prematurely fail. It has always just been what you get with these cars aftermarket clutches. I would say that Clutchmasters and ACT seem to be your best bet so far. I have not tried the Exedy aftermarket setup yet so I don't know how they really are. All I do know is that I have never used a spec clutch setup because I have changed at least 5 or 6 for other people over the years, only one of them lasted over 10k most were around 5-6k.

I'm not entirely sure on this, but from what I remember (and many others seemed to agree) clutch quality goes like this.

Worst
ACT

Clutchnet

(big gap)


Exedy


(big gap)


Spec

Clutchmasters (and all re-brands including JWT and OEM Nissan)
Best


Something like that. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

Hey Cotrim, I'm thinking that discoloration is from production paint for the clutch disc. Looks too much like paint instead of blueing from extreme temp heat. Cotrim is right about the guide for the T/B, cleaned and regreased preferably with antiseize lube and the guide very smooth. Looks like normal wear for T/B to PP from what I've seen in the past but looking at the flywheel the underside of the PP will be just like he said, glazed & hotspotted. Shawn, my thoughts are for you to get a 00-01 B15 clutch disc. Dependable, virtually indestructible and OEM. Oh yeah, get the B15 LSD tranny. No reason to half a** the project now. If you can find one with low miles, even better. Don't know how old your T/B is but when you replace it do the retaining clips for sure. One less thing to worry about....

Yeah, I'm not even talking about friction surface wear though. I'm talking about broken clutch disc frames, popped springs, etc. Of course stock power on a stock clutch is going to be more forgiving on the friction surface, but if I had an aftermarket clutch disc **** the bed with less than 10k miles on it on natural aspirated (stock) power, then there's something seriously wrong with this picture.

You've definitely got that wrong...

The worst by far out of all on that list is SPEC. There's a big gap between SPEC and any other clutch on the list. Exedy and ACT can be held in the same regard, though some will say ACT is worse, and some will say Exedy is worse. I have no experience with JWT or Clutchmasters, and OEM would definitely be highly regarded as an excellent replacement. I just don't know how much they can hold.

I can tell you from my experience, I love my ACT. I don't like the pedal feel, but I don't think I can attribute that to the clutch. I think there are other issues/gremlins in my tranny that take a leg of steel to depress the pedal.