MaxedOut97SE

Hey everyone, here's the deal. About two months ago I had tranny work done, so I thought it would be convienient (and cheap) to go ahead and replace my clutch. My old clutch, with 64,000 original miles on it was not seriously worn, in fact the dealer said I had at leat 15-25k miles left on it, however I figured why not pay 200 bucks now as opposed to 700+ in a year or so. They advised me to "go ahead and do it" as well. Well, when I picked the car up I noticed the pedal feel was signifacantly lighter, and it seemed fine. I seldom rag my car out, so it took me a while to notice something wasn't right. I noticed that upon shifting from first to second under full throttle at redline, the clutch slips. It gets consistantly worse after each time. For instance, it ALMOST (but not nearly enough for a brand new clutch) has enough grab the first time, but if you do it again, it will slip horribly, sometimes it will not even grab the gear AT ALL. It will just redline like in neutral and then eventually grab gear. What I don't understand is, the clutch performs flawlessly under normal driving. If say, you give the car moderate to heavy throttle and upshift at say 5k, it acts the same as my old clutch, it seems to have enough grab. It is perfect until it gets hot. When it heats up from hard driving, it just gets worse and worse. Literally, if you jam from first to second more than once in a row, it will take a second or two to grab gear, if it even does at all. I know this isn't normal because you could abuse the hell out of my old clutch over and over again, all day long, and it would bark second easily, consistently every time. I am taking the car in thursday to get looked at. This IS NOT A KEY VALUE CLUTCH (even if it was is it THAT sh*tty???), I called the dealer more than once and asked them if a replacement clutch would be identical to the clutches from the factory when the car was new and they said yes. Can anyone tell me what might be wrong here? I mean apparently the clutch is bad, but I don't understand how that could be. I mean how often do "bad clutches" get put in cars? This is extremely frustrating. I would like to know what could be wrong here so if and when the dealer tries to BS me, I will know exactly what to say (demand). Sorry for the length of this thread but this is all the info so you experts wont have to ask me stuff I left out. Thank you.

hlh0501

iTrader: (1)

after doing my conversion.. and was like WTF is going on !!!

I got home from the conversion on a slipping used old clutch, and immediately pulled my tranny and put in a 180$ autozone cluctch disc, pressure plate, TOB... , and thought I fixed it... till about a week later when I reallly got on it.. 1st time I shifted 1-2@redline it spun those tires.. 2nd time some slippage, worse and worse - it started getting where if I got in my car, once the car warmed up , the clutch would slip pretty terribly.. I was suuuuper frustrated.. I was ready to buy ACT stuff and really fix it... I waited a couple more days, and seemed like after I ran the crap out of this clutch (trying to basically kill it) it was getting better... if I took it on the interstate and it slipped in 5th, Id run the revs up, bring back down, rev up, down, and the resistence was getting better and better....

after a few days of treating my clutch terribly (it NEVER smelled of a burning clutch.... ? ?? ) my clutch was fixed !! !

my sus****ion is somehow, somewhere oil or some crap got on the flywheel? (I made SUPER sure that it was clean when I put it together, I even got 200grit sandpaper and sanded the fly to make TOTALLY sure after I cleaned it..), but now that whatever was screwy in there is burnt out or whatever I did, its incredible... !!! NO clutch problems whatsoever now...

try taking your car on the interstate and rev it when the clutch is slipping... do it a few times, see if it smells burning.. if so, then you know its not a oil problem or something like me.. if not, and resistence is building, I'd say try what I did, but I cant guarantee how good/bad it is to do...

sorry if this post doesnt make sense, is 2:40am hehe... let me know if I need to clear any of that up..

Chebosto

iTrader: (1)

after your clutch installs, did u do the necessary "break-in" period for the clutch? i.e. drive 400 miles STREET, with NO rpms over 3500?
if u didn't u might not have broken the clutch in properly, and might have similar problems...

if ur going to swap out the clutch. always go with the better brands.. you get what u pay for.

-C

hlh0501

iTrader: (1)

no I did not do 400 miles, I did about 300 miles of easy driving, mainly city miles (some highway) before I tried it (actually found myself running w/ a ///M3... yeah I knew I'd get beat but oh well..the dude was real cool, we talked afterwards and he was WAY impressed by the maxima)

so yes, I made 2 mistakes... I didnt do enough breakin, and a HUGE mistake was getting the crappy "dynapak" from autozone, but I was just needing my car immediately and couldnt wait for new stuff to come... I figured I'd just drop the tranny again if when/if I got new stuff