Thread: Broken clutch question

Had a stage 3 clutch masters kit in the car. Stock HP levels, installed it in anticipation of boost.

Last Thursday heard an unusual noise from the trans, car then became progressively harder and harder to shift until it would just not disengage the clutch.

Long story short, took the trans off today, this is what I found:



The piece that I'm holding in my hand was stuck inside of the pressure plate, which I think was part of the reason why the clutch wasn't disengaging when I tried to shift.

However, my question to all you clutch experts, is what causes this? Obviously the metal was weak, but was this because this clutch was defective or was it because of something else?

This bad boy was supposed to hold 210% torque increase over stock, lol @ it failing within 5k miles.

at least it was not like this one:

You've got to be ****ting me..

That's the way the clutch came out from a D21 hardbody.. amazing thing is that the truck came in running to the shop

yeah thats pretty bad, haha neways wildmane yeah crap like that happens to clutches, most clutches other than act ive always heard of people blowing off peices of the disk which includes the housing, springs and more. in my old se-r i ran a spec stage 3 with that same disk, well needless to say i blew out the springs within 1k miles, took it out and two springs and the caging around it was broken, i called the company and they sent me their stage 5 six puck sprung, well i needed the car so i put the disk back in and not even 500 miles later the other two springs blew out of the disk, so i took them out and put the disk back in with no springs until my other disk arrived, then when it got here i swapped it out, needless to say i had to do 4 clutch jobs within a 1 month period, haha, yeah it sucked, i now have an act extreeme pp with a 4 puck NON Sprung even though ive heard no bad things about the act sprung disks, i dont want to take chances plus its not hard for me to drive the car even with that heavy of a clutch in there, even in stop and go. haha

i would definetly go with a puck disk and get rid of that crap kevlar disk, its the same disk that i first had on my old se-r and it did not hold worth the crap, the puck disk held way way better and they freakin last forever and the housing on that 6 puck was way beefier. Get a good disk for that pp you have and you will be good to go.

I dont see anything wrong, what am i missing?

Yeah Clutchmasters is crap. I had a stage 1 ( IIRC ) way back in 2003, only after about 3k miles one of the springs popped out, and i only had I/H/E back then.

Fast forward to 2007, i had the old style ACT 4 puck ( previous owner installed ) and one of those springs popped out, was lodged in between the PP fingers, removed that & installed ( temporary ) a Exedy OEM Kit for about 8k miles at 8 psi of boost. This is what she looked like after i took her out to install a 6 puck ACT disc....

Check out the disc on the left... and compare it to the disc on the right


Yeah to 91 and ash, thanks for the tips/advice. I've got a OEM disc with like < 5k miles on it so I'm going to throw that in there with the clutchmasters PP. Hopefully the PP will hold up for a while If/when the stock disc goes, I'll go with the 6 puck nonsprung, sounds like a good plan.

Thanks guys.


Oh and 91... 8k miles on 8 psi of boost on that OEM disc... I'm almost going to call bs That thing isn't worn at all...

I wish it was BS. I broke it in the way its supposed to ( baby it for the 1st 1k miles ) , stay in vacuum whenever possible.

Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't hold very well at 5k rpms, but it gripped up to then.

My ACT 6 puck is like night n day by comparisons.

I have old posts on the old forum and on G20.net where i have posted about having an OEM Exedy kit. I can dig 'em if ya like

Haha nah, I believe you. Pretty good indicator of how strong the OEM stuff is..