I purchased my 04 a little over a month ago and last week I began experiencing clutch issues. It started when I lost all clutch pressure while driving down the highway but then it came back, albeit fairly weak, but still driveable. I assumed master cylinder so I replaced and bled the system. Still had the same issue. I then noticed lots of shaking and juddering getting going in first or reverse and also while turning right at low speeds but the car otherwise drove fine, shifting through all the gears without issue. The most bizarre symptom it demonstrated was if I brought it up to high rpms I would lose all clutch pressure again only to return shortly thereafter. I elected to bring it to Honda who quoted me $3,200 for parts and labor. I bought the parts myself: OEM friction disc, ACT pressure plate, OEM release and pilot bearings, release bearing guide, and a new lightweight flywheel. Labor was quoted at $800 for the install.

Honda called me today with a video and some info on my car. Now I had known when I purchased this car that it was lightly modified but the car was VERY clean, the engine ran very smooth, and transmission felt as it should. As it turns out the engine is from another car and the trans is also from another car. No biggie, however whoever did this work really ****ed up. Cross threaded 3 bolt holes, trans mount was loose and misaligned, etc. With the symptoms I was experiencing I had guessed either the pressure plate was damaged or one of the springs in the friction disc had let go. Nope. Half of the friction material just came apart from the disc. Picture below.

 

Interesting. Coincidentally, I am having those same excessive shaking/juddering symptoms right now as well.
I guess my friction-disc probably looks like that too, or similar.
It makes sense tho - uneven/broken pads on friction-disc will most likely mean uneven contact with flywheel/PP, causing chatter/shake/judder.

Wow.... Honda charges that much?! ...minus the labor, that's $2400 in just parts!

 

Looks like an Exedy disk too (or some other cheap 3rd-party disk).

Previous owner of mine also put in an Exedy in the car.

 

That's not a factory disk

It looks like an Exedy. It was bound to fail.

That sucks about the shoddy work. Unfortunately, a LOT of people do very shoddy work, I've found. It stems from impatience, lack of skill, lack of tools, etc.

Think of how these people probably handled the clutch and related parts during install.

I'm sure you'll find a better experience after a qualified person has installed genuine Honda parts.

Make sure you do an interlock bypass since you got a heavier pressure plate!

 

That is insane for installing a clutch. I can do it on jackstands in 8 hours pretty easily. So the labor seems to check out from their price. But when I did mine, I bought all Honda parts from Majestic Honda. I replaced vs resurfaced the flywheel too. So flywheel, pilot bearing, release bearing pressure plate and friction disc cost me $850 including $45 in shipping and handling. I know parts prices have gone up since late 2016 when I did that but hard to believe they went up 3X!

 

Yeah, their price mark up is outrageous. They wanted $700 just for an OEM flywheel.

 

Dealer markup's seem to be like the wild west. Honda Dealer A sometimes will sell a part for 5X more than Honda Dealer B down the street.

 

That's not totally out of line for a locally sourced OEM flywheel though. I think online prices are in the $500 range, no?

Edit...just searched. An OEM one is ~$450+ shipping on dealer sites. So close to $500.

Hopefully whatever flywheel you bought is high quality. Its not something you wanna price shop on. A cheap one can damage the engine. But its also spins at as high as 150 times/second right next to your leg.

 

$378 at Majestic. But, I will just re-use mine; if it's hopefully not cracked or anything.

 

I bought an ACT Prolite.