We got sent a super weird clutch and installed it anyway

This

clutch

doesn't make sense to me, so I'll install it in my car a long time ago. I actually got a bunch of free parts for the Miata and one of the things I got was this

clutch

and the first time I saw it. I thought, damn, it's a three-disc design, it's a copper ceramic clutch material and it's got this heavy-duty pressure plate, it's got all the makings of a high-performance clutch with a lot of torque holding capacity, but then I looked it up online. and found out that the torque ratings are only 189 lb-ft and that just doesn't make any sense to me.

Why make a clutch with all these aggressive properties that can only hold 189 foot-pounds? So what makes this performance clutch totally fake. Or am I missing something and somehow this actually hits a sweet spot of drivability and performance? I don't know yet, but today we'll find out and, along the way, we'll talk about what makes me think this is so good. It's strange how the clutch works in general and then we'll drive it to see if this really is as strange as I think it might be when you shift these gears and clutch so aggressively that you ultimately compromise some drivability.

There are other clutches. There is a Miata on the market that supports more than 300 pound-feet with a much more comfort-oriented design. When you run a puckered clutch with an aggressive friction material, you lose a lot of drivability. This thing will activate like a bat out of hell. It will be like an on/off switch. I think so, before we go any further, let's drive the Miata as it is now so we can compare the drivability before and after installing this wild little thing. Let's start releasing the clutch so it starts to engage. there, oh, it's so simple you could do it all day, you can do it without thinking about it at all, it's so easy to drive right now, my biggest worry is that we're going to ruin the drivability of this car, the window engagement is going to be will become very short, you will basically go from being completely disengaged to completely engaged very quickly.

I think you'll feel worse. I hope it doesn't feel absolute, but it sure could. I think maybe it will be a little bit shorter period, but. It won't be as bad as you say, that's my prediction, what do you think it will be? I think it will be horrible. I think it will be like an on and off switch. Well, we have the car safely lifted. get to the clutch obviously we need to get the transmission out so I need to get the transmission out there are a few things we need to get out of the way first we need to get the exhaust out ok the exhaust is out of the way look how cool it is that transmission. fluid it's like well I'm like we just put that stuff in there a month and a half ago okay so we disconnect the driveshaft with just four bolts here in the back and then we should be able to pull it out and it'll just pull.

Getting out of the transmission nice and easy like this now, if we hadn't drained the transmission already, we would be losing some fluid right now. I need this thing out of the way so I can release the transmission. It's called the power plant frame and it attaches the transmission here to the diff to the rear subframe, all right, now we've got the slave cylinder out and then it's time to take these bellhousing bolts out and get the transmission out, good, we're done. . This before, but listen, it's not good to rely on your brain to remember things, trust me, so instead of trying to remember where the bolts came from but where they go back to, make a little diagram, this is our bail housing and These are all the bolts. positions and this is where they came from and the spike, you know the way they came out the front or the back, it makes it a lot easier to put things back in, so there's a couple of electrical connectors on the top of the transmission now that we're halfway met when you put our hands up to get to them okay that should be all the electrical stuff it's too high on the transmission jack to make out from under the car so I'm just going to pull it up back and then I'll drag it. take it off the jack and drag it from the bottom here she is out and it only took 8 minutes so we finally got the transmission out now we just need to remove the old clutch in low flight now when you go to do that put your wrench in The turns can be connected to the crankshaft , so the trick is to reinstall one of the bell housing bolts and then you get a lever that you can hold against the steering wheel to turn.

You know the bolt is loose, but you would also use impact tools. Oh, pressure plate for you, for you, now we have to remove this steering wheel, so this is the original steering wheel, which means this puppy weighs a lot, so another little trick. I just put in another bell housing bolt and drilled the other bottom hole so it doesn't. I don't really have to worry about catching the steering wheel when it comes loose, all I have to do is make sure it doesn't tip forward, why does it roll? Okay, so we remove the steering wheel now that we can see the back of our engine. this is like the back of our crankshaft where the flywheel mounts and it surrounds this seal that always tends to leak it's called the rear main seal and if you're ever new to a clutch job you should also do your rear main seal because that's it. there, it's here.

I like to use just one variety of picks. You can also use flathead screwdrivers, but the important thing is not to scratch any of the surfaces on either side of the seal. There it is, if you were to come in here. make a rear main seal, but that would be annoying, so we pulled our old clutch out of the car and it looks pretty good, it has a lot of life left in it, like I said, but we didn't really need to make a clutch on this car, so this would be nice for a long time, but let's jump in and compare this side by side with our fancy new clutch, so after looking at these things, you'll be able to quickly realize that they look pretty cool. different, this is that organic integral disc that is great for a comfortable street ride and this is our nasty crazy three putt clutch, so this aggressive material grips very tightly because it only grips in three little spots, so this is an original ruffle and she is a thick Betty, there is no one nice and light, but why do you want a light ruffle?

Well your flywheel is bolted to the crankshaft of your engine, it spins every time the engine is running, that gives the engine momentum because this thing is heavy. when you have a heavy flywheel it's hard to stop the engine, it's a lot harder to stop it, but it also takes a little bit of time for your revs to go up and down, so the lighter flywheel those revs can move a lot faster, but it's It's also much easier to stop off the line because you have less momentum to keep the engine running. We also have our pressure plates and I mean they look pretty identical except this one looks old, although I think it has a higher clamping capacity or holding capacity over the original one, so now we've ripped all this stuff off to get our transmission out and get to our clutch, we have taken it out and seen it side by side with our new crazy, my opinion remains the same.

I think this thing will continue to perform considerably worse with this clutch. Yes, not my opinion. Let's break it down guys, the flywheel and pressure plate will have like a light film of oil on them for shipping. so they don't rust, but that would be very bad if you install them with that oil in there, it would basically completely ruin the friction disc, so we need to make sure we clean it. One of the things we need to do on the transmission is replace our release bearing or throwout bearing, so to do that we're going to take out our clutch fork, which is a little spring here, okay, this is the best thing ever.

You'll be able to see what's going on here. when you press the clutch pedal it pushes this fork which pushes the release bearing forward which pushes our diaphragm spring which releases all the pressure on our pressure plate which releases the friction disc and the flywheel just undoes that sandwich so come on Clean this up now and put it back together much cleaner and I'm much wetter. I'm also going to put on a nice new coat of grease, not just any old grease, but high temperature molybdenum grease that should stay in place for a long time. time so you also need to grease these splines but very lightly because that puppy is spinning and if you put a bunch of grease on it and then that grease spills on the clutch disc you just killed the clutch okay so we're down here.

I got all my steering wheel hardware just reusing the original material and now I'm going to apply my new Thread Locker, all good on the Miata, there's no way to put this wrong, but on some cars it is, so you have to pay attention. Okay, now it's time to squeeze. I think the last thing we need to do is clean it again because I just made it really dirty. You can see the hub sticks out a little more on this side going towards the gearbox, so put it on. Up here put our pressure plate in place it shouldn't cause it to slip so this is our clutch alignment tool and almost every clutch you get will come with one of these and the goal is to make sure your disc clutch is centered because it's kind of floating right now.

We could tighten this pressure plate and make the clutch disc very off center and then it will be impossible to put our transmission back on, so this basically simulates the transmission being in place and the front of this slips right into the bushing pilot now let's put the transmission back in, yeah how are we going to do this? The whole floor, the whole transmission Jack doesn't fit under here. It's pretty annoying, I know, but I think that's how it is. I really do not know. What I want is what's in the way of my left knee and my right knee can't hold a transmission so we're locking the shifter real quick so we can try to get it into gear and then we'll be able to put the driveshaft in the transmission output and turn it so we turn the input shaft to change the way the splines engage between the clutch and retain the intake so right now the splines don't engage so I'll spin it one of them and hopefully I'll move there, come on, come on, come on, God bless this, it'll probably come out again, damn masterpiece, my old used cartons will be for sale and I'll buy that donut, that fake half, $100 a piece, okay, that's enough for now.

We'll hold the rear of the transmission now we can go ahead and put all the bellhousing bolts back in, tighten the transmission back to the engine and then probably go to sleep. I'm going to cry deep tears, okay, so that's enough. For tonight we bring out the old stuff, new stuff, but it's dark, it's late, I'm tired, so I'm going to get up nice and early in the morning, button this up and then we'll go drive it and see if it just ruined the way it drives this car and if we did God I really want to put that old original clutch back in so we got it right again and early this morning Eddie just got here but I have a lot of things done.

Ya, reinstalling all of this is exactly the same as removing it just in reverse, so the driveshafts in the exhaust are back in place. All the bellhousing bolts are nice and tight so we take out our transmission shifter on the old Miata and where this goes is called the turret, it's usually pretty empty as it is now but I'm a turkey baster in some new fluid, get things moving and alright, time to refill the transmission with some beer oil, we've done this before. I've shown you how to do it, but it's very easy. We're simply going to pump liquid into our fill plug until it overflows and that's how we know it's full.

There it goes. dripping good so I just wanted to take a break from the madness for a minute and give you guys some honest advice on what you should do if you're looking for a clutch for yourselves because obviously what we're going through is a little strange. So if you're buying a clutch, you first need to be honest with yourself about how much power you're making or how much power you're aiming to make with whatever you're putting the clutch in and then once you know how much power it is. in terms of torque, then you can select a clutch that can hold that amount of torque and basically what you want to do is get a clutch that will hold the torque that you're going to generate without being too excessive like in the Miata if we had put in a clutch that could hold 500 lb-ft, we'd be dealing with a lot of drawbacks from that aggressive clutch design that we don't really need, so there's no reason to go overboard with the clutch, just get what you can handle. the power you are generating and do it as much as possiblecomfortably possible, so bleeding the clutch slave cylinder is pretty much like bleeding the brakes, so I'm sucking out what I can and then we'll refill it with new fluids. and then I'll go down and open the bleeder and let gravity do its thing and just let a little bit of fluid flow for a minute, don't squeeze it and then I've got my guy, Eddie, get in the driver's seat and pump the clutch and then I'll tell you to hold it and then when I'm holding it I'll open the bleeder to open up some air and the fluid should come out, do that a couple of times and then the clutch will be bled baby okay so we still have the car in the stands.

I'll boot it up real quick and put Geir on just to make sure we don't hear any strange noises, make sure everything seems okay. the steering wheel turns, my wheel turns fine, that means the clutch isn't just dragging or anything, that's good, so now we'll put it in first, just slowly let the clutch release the first time it engages, There it goes, the wheels are turning. I assume there will be no strange noises, no strange shuddering, vibrations or shaking, we have a new clutch, now I can't say what. It's going to feel like it from up here because we're not on the ground, the tires aren't loaded so we're not pushing the car forward, so I'm not sure what the compromises are going to feel like yet, but we'll find it.

It'll be fine soon, with that the interior is finished and I'm pretty sure the exterior is ready to go, so it's time to put this on the ground and go for a drive to see how it feels finally, okay let's see how it feels good. So just trying to take off as smoothly as possible, you can definitely see it's a much more aggressive clutch and the engagement window is much smaller, it goes from being completely disengaged, you feel it start to engage and then it engages, but it's not that. bad, it's actually very manageable. I mean, I don't know, I was a little worried going into this because we were really going to ruin the way this thing drove, as far as you know, being easy to just jump in and go for a cruise, you know, and I don't like to feel which is a chore to drive and listen to, the clutch pedal is a little heavier, the engagement is a little harsher and more aggressive and the engagement window is a little shorter, but it's not that bad and we.

I have more torque holding capacity and honestly 190 lb-ft, even if that's the inaccurate rating, that's probably all the torque I'm going to make at least in the first iteration of a turbo in this car, and then that's it. You know. which can probably hold 200 foot pounds if we can hold 190 right, I don't know, but one day we'll find out, okay, let's go back to the house, you know, I'm in a good mood now. Happy we didn't ruin the car, the clutch is working, the hard work is done now we just have to reap the benefits and that's what this is all about, so we

installed

our little three putt clutch and the truth is that it is no It's so bad, it's not too aggressive, it's very drivable and it gives the car a sporty feel, so you know, I think today was a win.

I'm a little worried because it only supports 189 foot-pounds, but we'll make that clear. to the test once we put a turbo under this, which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later, so what else did we learn today? Well, we learned that you can fight your way through a clutch in the driveway, it will be difficult, don't kid yourself. Thinking it's not, but it's doable, you're going to struggle, you saw it, you saw me ride that fight bus, but hey, it's all worth it in the end and we do it for you

anyway

, and if this is your first video car or the thousandth, it is not like that.

It doesn't matter, you're welcome here, we do this every day, new car content every day and usually something fun happens and we try to be informative so I hope you learned something from watching me struggle so if a video every day is not sufficient. For you, you have to visit our subreddit and visit our Facebook group. We are a great community, so hit the subscribe button and join us. We'll see you here tomorrow. I'm Zach and this is a money pit for that whole title.