Hi,

A couple days ago at a track day, my tranny decided to not shift into gears smoothly. Every gear had to be grounded in with the RPMs dropping to almost idle. I quickly called it quits for the day and headed home, thinking I had broken the tranny.

Upon draining the trans fluid and not seeing any unusual signs of damage in the fluid. I pulled the tranny and clutch and noticed the following broken section from the clutch disk:





Unbroken Section for Comparision:



Havn't owned the car for very long and still completely stock, I'm a little bit disappointed. I was going from 4th to 5th at 9000rpm when this happen, but I had not missed any shifts nor was I performing abusive shifts.

Has anyone else had this happen before? Things rarely break on only one car in mass production vehicles, but I'm hoping this is just a fluke and I was just unluckly. I'm thinking of throwing in a new stock clutch with a lighten flywheel for replacment since I don't plan on any major power mods, and the car will spend most driving time on the street/road course, not drag racing. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Derek

 

I'm sorry I can't be much help, but one thing is for certain..

YOU WERE HAULING SOME ASS!!!

 

looks like a part the sits infront of the helper spring, i would suggest upgrading to a better clutch, it think the majority will say the stock clutch stinks
try for a ACT or Exedy one
peace!

 

Jeez. I don't think I have hit the top of 4th yet. Hopefully the day will come soon.


Sorry to hear about this though man

 

High rpm can be hard on clutch parts. A couple have posted about failed aftermarket clutch disks. This is the first stock disk failure I have seen.

I had the exact same failure on a Taurus SHO disk years ago.. Ford had so much trouble that they put out a TSB (first year SHO) putting in a heavier flywheel and disk to reduce slipping and increase longevity.

 

Good comments, guys!

In regards to upgrading to an aftermarket unit, the options that I've been exploring revolve around a stock disk (ACT street, Mugen PP/Stock Disk, etc). I think the benefits of a full face organic disk are important to me and I don't wish to have windsheild shattering grab for stock power levels (Exedy for example?).

cdelena - Interesting how you mention aftermarket disks doing this, I assume you're refering to puck disks similar to those offered by ACT, Star, Mugen, etc? If this my failure is uncommon on stock clutches, I think I'll try another stock clutch since the road course is *typically* not very hard on clutches....

Thanks,

Derek

 

NOt sure if you are intrested but i might be selling my 2003 cluth flywheel, etc w/ 10k miles on it. I just upgraded to the clutchmasters stage 4 and toda flywheel.

 

Derek,

I just picked my car up from the dealer after a clutch repair. The symptoms you described matched mine exactly. When I showed the service manager a picture of your clutch he was very surprised; mine had failed identically to yours. The disk and pressure plate still had plenty of surface left. The service advisor said he has seen only one failure similar, on a prelude. I considered a Spec Star Stage 1 or 2, but decided to stay with OEM replacements. Overall I'm not complaining about the OEM pp/disk, it ran just fine for 96,000 miles.

Bob

 

Hi Bob,

Thanks for sharing your experience. You are the first besides myself to come up with this issue.

My car is an earlier '00 with 54k miles. I wonder if this failure is only limited to the earlier cars (like many other issues) and only appear after being driven for many miles. Mine did fail at the track, but the car had not been driven on the track until about a week before this failure, so maybe I just accelerated the process after it's been already working towards failure for a few years... Who knows..

I ordered another clutch from the dealer with part number off of the '03 model. Hopefully this one will hold together.

Derek