- This clutch makes no sense to me.
So I'm gonna install it in my car.
(thunder) (trap beat)
A long time ago I actually got
a handful of parts for free for the Miata.
And one of the things I got was this clutch.
And the first time I saw it I was like
"Damn, it's a three puck design,
"it's a copper ceramic clutch material,
"and it's got this heavy duty pressure plate?"
It's got the makings of being a high-performance clutch
with a lot of torque holding capability.
But then I looked it up online
and found that the torque rating's only 189 foot pounds
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 gives?
Is this performance clutch just a total phony,
or am I missing something
and somehow this just really nails some sweet spot
of drivability and performance?
I don't know yet but today we're gonna find out.
And along the way we're gonna talk about
what makes me think this thing is so weird,
how clutches work in general,
and then we'll drive it around to see if this thing
really is as weird as I think it might be.
When you make these changes
and make such an aggressive clutch
you ultimately compromise some drivability.
There are other clutches on the market for the Miata
that hold over 300 foot pounds
with a much more comfort oriented design.
When you run a pucked clutch
with an aggressive friction material
you lose a lot of drivability.
This thing is gonna engage like a bat out of hell.
It's gonna be like an on/off switch, I think.
So before we go any further,
let's go drive the Miata how it is now
so we can compare drivability
before and after we install this wild little thing.
(engine idling)
We'll see.
Start letting the clutch out.
So it starts to engage right about there.
Oh, it's so smooth.
You could just do that all day.
You can do it without thinking about it at all.
It's so easy to drive right now.
My biggest concern
is that we're gonna ruin the drivability of this car.
The engagement window is gonna become very short.
It's gonna basically go from fully disengaged
to full engaged very quickly.
- [Eddie] I think it's gonna feel like (bleep).
- I think it's gonna feel worse.
I hope it doesn't feel like absolute ass(bleep)
but it sure might.
- I think it'll maybe,
it'll be a little bit shorter window
but it's not gonna be as bad as you guys are saying it is.
That's my prediction.
What do you think it's gonna be?
- [Eddie] I think it's gonna be awful.
I think it's gonna be like an on/off switch.
- All right, well we'll see who's right.
(chill beat)
- Okay, we got the car all nice and safely jacked up.
To get to the clutch,
obviously we need to get the transmission out.
So to get the transmission out
there's some stuff we need to get out of the way first.
We need to get the exhaust off.
Okay, exhaust it out of the way.
Look at how fresh that trans fluid is.
It's like we only,
it's like we only put that stuff in there
a month and a half ago.
Okay, so we got the drive shaft disconnected,
just four bolts here at the rear,
and then we should be able to pop it off
and it'll just pull right on out of the transmission.
Nice and easy.
Just like that.
Now if we hadn't drained the transmission already
we'd be leaking some fluid right now.
I need this thing to swing out of the way
so I can drop the transmission.
It's called the power plant frame
and it ties the transmission back here
to the diff or to the rear subframe.
All right, sweet.
Now I'm taking off the slave cylinder
and then it's time to pop out these bell housing bolts
and take the transmission out.
All right, we've been over this before but listen.
It's no good to rely on your brain to remember stuff.
Trust me.
So rather than trying to remember
where bolts came out of or where they go back,
juts make yourself a little diagram.
This is our bell housing
and these are all the bolt positions,
and this is where they came from and the, you know,
the way they came out, front or back.
So makes it a lot easier to put things back in.
All right, so there's a couple electrical connectors
on top of the transmission.
Now that we've got it about half way down
we can get our hands up to get to them.
Okay, that should be all the electrical stuff.
(chill beat)
It's too tall on the transmission jack
to make it out from under the car.
So I'm just gonna pull it back
and then I'm gonna drag it off the jack
and drag it out form under here.
She's out and it only took eight minutes.
So we finally got the transmission out.
Now we just need to take off the old clutch and flywheel.
Now when you go to do that,
you put your wrench on,
the thing spins
'cause it's just connected to your crankshaft.
So the trick is to reinstall one of your bell housing bolts,
then get a pry bar.
You can hold against the flywheel to turn your bolt loose.
But you could also just buy impact tools.
(drill revving)
(bangs) Ow!
Ow!
Pressure plate for you.
Clutch disk for you.
Now we got to get this flywheel off.
All right, so this is the stock flywheel.
That means that this puppy weighs a lot.
So another little trick,
I just put another bell housing bolt
into the other bottom hole
so that I don't really have to worry about
catching the flywheel when it comes off.
All I got to do is just make sure it doesn't tip forward.
(drill revs)
Okay, flywheel (groans).
All right, so we've got the flywheel off now
and we can see the back of our engine.
This is the back of our crankshaft
where the flywheel mounts up.
And surrounding that,
this seal, which always tends to leak,
is called your rear main seal.
And if you're ever doing a clutch job
you should also do your rear main seal,
'cause you're already in there, it's right here.
I like to use just a variety of picks.
You can also use flathead screwdrivers,
but what's important
is that you don't scratch either surface
on either side of the seal.
There she is.
If you had to get in here just to do a rear main seal,
boy, that would be annoying.
All right, so we've got our old clutch out of the car
and it looks pretty good.
It's got a lot of life left.
Like I said,
we didn't really need to do a clutch in this car
so this thing would be good for a long time to come.
But let's go inside and compare this thing side by side
to our new fancy clutch.
So after looking at these things
you can tell pretty quickly that they look a lot different.
This is that organic full-face disk
that's great for comfortable street driving,
and this is our nasty, crazy, three puck clutch.
So this aggressive material gets clamped really hard
because it's only being clamped in three little spots.
So this is the stock flywheel
and she's a thick Betty.
This new one,
ooh, it's nice and light.
But why do you even want a lightweight flywheel?
Well, your flywheel is bolted to the crankshaft
on your engine.
It's spinning anytime your engine is running.
So that gives your engine momentum
because this thing is heavy.
So when you've got a heavy flywheel
it's hard to stop your engine,
it's a lot harder to stall.
But it also takes a while
for your revs to climb up and to fall back down.
So the lighter flywheel,
those revs can move a lot quicker
but it's also a lot easier to stall off the line
'cause you have less momentum keeping the engine running.
Then we've also got our pressure plates,
and, I mean, they look pretty freakin' identical
except that this one just looks old.
Although I do believe
that this has an increased clamping capacity
or clamping capability over the stock one.
All right, so now that we've torn out all this stuff
to get our transmission out to get down to our clutch,
we've got it out and we've looked at it side by side
with our new crazy one,
my opinion is still the same.
I think this thing is still gonna drive
considerably worse with this clutch.
Yep, my opinion has not changed.
Let's get cracking, boys.
The flywheel and the pressure plate
will have a light film of oil on them for shipping
so that they don't rust.
But that would be very bad
if you installed them with that oil on there.
It would completely ruin the friction disk basically.
So got to make sure you wipe it down.
One of the things we need to do on the transmission
is replace our release bearing or our throwout bearing.
So do that we're gonna pop off our clutch fork,
which is just a little spring back here.
Okay, this is about as good
as you've ever gonna be able to see what's going on in here.
When you push the clutch petal,
that pushes on this fork,
which pushes the release bearing forward,
which pushes on our diaphragm spring,
which releases all the pressure on our pressure plate,
which releases the friction disk,
and the flywheel,
just kind of undoes that sandwich.
All right, so let's clean this thing up now
and put it back together.
Much cleaner.
And I'm much wetter.
And I'm also gonna put on a nice new coat of grease.
Not just any old grease,
some nice high-temp moly grease
that should stay in place for a long time.
You also need to grease up these splines
but very lightly because that puppy is spinning.
And if you put a bunch of grease on that
and then that grease slings out onto your clutch disk,
(weird noise) you just killed your clutch.
Okay, so we're down here.
I've got all my flywheel hardware.
Just reusing the stock stuffs.
And now I'm gonna apply my new threadlocker.
All right, on the Miata
there's no way to put this thing on wrong,
but on some cars there so you got to pay attention.
Okay, now it's time to torque I think.
(clinking)
The last thing we need to do is wipe it down again
'cause I just made a huge mess of it.
You can see the hub sticks out
a little further on this side.
That goes towards the gearbox.
So we'll put it up in here,
get our pressure plate in place.
Should get it to slide on.
Okay, so this is our clutch alignment tool
and pretty much every clutch you ever get
is gonna come with one of these.
And the point of it
is to make sure that your clutch disk is centered,
'cause it's kind of floating right now.
We could tighten this pressure plate up
and have the clutch disk be way off center,
and then it's gonna be impossible
to get our transmission back in.
So this basically simulates the transmission being in place
and the front of this slips right into the pilot bushing.
(groovy music)
Now let's put that transmission back in.
Uh, yeah, how are we gonna do this?
The whole trans jack not fitting under here thing
was pretty annoying.
- [Eddie] Put it on your belly.
- I know but it's,
I don't really want to is the thing.
(groaning) Ow, (bleep).
(groaning)
This power plant frame is (bleep) in the way of my left knee
and my right knee can't hold up a transmission.
Come on, leg.
Okay, come on, honey.
Ooh, losing it, ah (bleep).
(sighs)
Ah (bleep), why me?
Ooh, boy.
(clanking)
(groaning)
All right, so we're jamming the shifter back in real quick
so we can try to put it in gear.
(clanking)
Tight.
And then we'll be able to put the driveshaft
in the output of the transmission
and spin it so that we spin the input shaft
so we change how the splines meet up
between the clutch and the transmission.
All right, so right now the splines aren't meeting up.
So we'll spin one of them
and hopefully they'll find each other.
(groans) (bleep).
(squeaking) (groans)
Just -- wiggle it.
There we go, there we go, there we go.
- It's in? - Yep.
- Then I bust this puppy back out,
that goddamn masterpiece.
My old used cardboards will be for sale on shop.donut.media
for only $100 apiece.
(chill trap beat)
Okay, that's good enough for now.
That'll hold the back of the transmission up.
Now we can go ahead
and put all our bell housing bolts back in,
cinch the transmission back down to the engine,
and then probably go to sleep.
I'm gonna cry deep, deep tears.
Okay, so that about does it for tonight.
We got the old stuff out,
new stuff back in,
but it's dark, it's late, I'm tired.
So I'll get up nice and early in the morning,
button this thing up,
and then we'll go drive it
and see if we just ruin the way this car drives.
And if we did,
god, I really looking for forward
to putting that old stock clutch back in.
(chill music)
All right, so we got back at it nice and early this morning.
Eddie just got here but I got a lot of stuff done already.
So reinstalling all this stuff
is pretty much exactly the same as taking it off,
just in reverse.
So the driveshaft's back in,
the exhaust is back on,
all the bell house bolts are tight and torqued.
All right, so we got our shifter
out of the transmission in the old Miata.
And where it goes in,
this is called the turret.
It usually is pretty empty like it is right now,
but -- my turkey baster in, some fresh fluid.
Get things shifting real nice.
Alrighty, it's time to fill the transmission back up
with some gear oil.
We've done this before,
I've showed you how to do it,
but it's real easy.
We're just gonna pump fluid up into our fill plug
until it spills out
and that's how we know it's full.
Okay, there she goes dripping out.
All right, 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.
'Cause obviously what we got going on is a little weird.
So if you're shopping for a clutch,
you should first be honest with yourself
about how much power you're making
or how much power you intend to make
on whatever you're putting a clutch in.
Then once you know how much power that is in terms of torque
then you can select a clutch that hold that much torque.
And basically what you want to do
is get a clutch that'll hold the torque you're gonna make
without being too far overkill.
Like in the Miata,
if we had put a clutch that could hold 500 foot pounds,
we'd be dealing with a whole bunch of drawbacks
from that aggressive clutch design
that we don't really need.
So there's no reason to go too overkill on a clutch.
Just get what can hold the power you're making
and do it as comfortably as possible.
So bleeding your slave cylinder on your clutch
is pretty much just like bleeding your brakes.
So I'm sucking out what I can,
and then we'll fill it back up with fresh fluid.
And then I'll do down below
and I'm gonna crack the bleeder open
and I'm gonna let gravity do its thing
and just let some fluid flow through for a minute.
Then we'll tighten it up
and then I'll have my boy Eddie get in the driver's seat
and pump the clutch the up,
and then I'll tell him to hold it.
And then when he's holding it I'll crack the bleeder open,
some air and fluid should shoot out.
Do that a couple times
and then the clutch will be bled, baby.
All right, so we've still got the car on the stands.
I'm gonna start it up real quick and put it in gear
just to make sure we're not hearing any funny noises,
make sure everything seems like it's fine.
Okay, so the flywheel's spinning.
Are my wheels spinning?
- [Eddie] No.
- Okay, so that means the clutch is not just dragging
or anything like that.
That's good.
So now I'll put it in first
and just slowly let the clutch out.
First time it ever engages.
There she goes, wheels are spinning I presume.
No weird noises, no weird shudders, vibrations, or shakes.
We got a new clutch.
Now I can't tell what it's gonna feel like from up here
because we're not on the ground.
The tires aren't loaded up
so it's not like we're actually pushing the car forward.
So still not sure
what the engagement's actually gonna feel like,
but we'll find out soon.
Yeah, all right,
with that the interior's finished
and I'm pretty sure the exterior's good to go.
Then time to put this thing on the ground and go drive,
see what this thing feels like finally.
All right, let's see how this thing feels.
(engine starts)
Okay, so just trying to take off as smoothly as possible.
You can definitely tell that it's a much more
aggressively engaging clutch,
and the engagement window is a lot smaller.
It goes from being completely disengaged,
you feel it start to engage,
and then it's engaged.
But it's not that bad.
It's pretty dang drivable really.
I mean, I don't know,
I was a little bit concerned going into this
that we were actually gonna
really wreck the way this thing drove
as far as being easy to just hop in
and go for a cruise
and not feeling like it's a chore to drive.
And listen,
the clutch petal is a little bit heavier,
the engagement is a little bit harsher and more aggressive,
and the engagement window is a little bit shorter.
But it's not that bad
and we've got more torque holding capability out of it.
And honestly 190 foot pounds,
even if that is an accurate rating,
that's probably all the torque I'm gonna make
on at least the first iteration
of a turbo build on this car really.
And then, you know what,
it can probably hold 200 foot pounds
if it can hold 190, right?
I don't know but we're gonna find out some day.
All right, let's go back to the house.
You know what, I'm in a good mood now, I'm happy.
We didn't ruin the car,
the clutch is on, the hard work is done.
Now we're just left to reap the benefits
and that's what this is all about.
All right, so we got our little three puck clutch installed
and the truth is it's not that bad.
It's not overly aggressive,
it's very drivable,
and it does give the car kind of a sporty feel.
So you know what,
I think today was a win.
I am a little concerned that it only holds 189 foot pounds
but we'll put that to the test
once we strap a turbo onto this thing,
which is hopefully gonna happen sooner than later.
So what else did we learn today?
Well, we learned that you can struggle your way
through a clutch in the driveway.
It's gonna be difficult,
don't kid yourself into thinking that it's not,
but it's doable.
You will struggle.
You saw it, you saw me ride that struggle bus,
but hey, it's all worth it in the end
and we do it for you guys anyway.
And if this is your first car video
or your thousandth it doesn't matter,
You're welcome here.
We do this every single day,
new car content everyday.
And something funny usually happens
and we try to be informative.
So I hope you guys are learning something
watching me struggle.
So if a video everyday isn't enough for you,
you got to check out our subreddit,
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So hit that Subscribe button and join us.
We'll see you guys here tomorrow.
I'm Zack and this is "Money Pit".
Roll that title. (laughter)