Having done a bit of research, always a dangerous thing, I have come across a few instances of the fingers on the clutch basket deciding that life is too difficult and breaking off. Now in itself this is not the end of the world and certainly would really slow you down much as there are the other fingers to transmit the torque, thats not to say its a brilliant situation as it will now overload the remaining fingers, but was does tend to happen is that when they come off they fire straight off into the crankcase, which is a MAJOR problem.
My first solution was to weld a ring around the outside of the fingers to help to stop them from coming off. In fact this idea was suggested by Dad who used to do it in his karting days! But we then decided against it due to material degradation due to HAZ. So I bought myself a billet basket. Now some people will tell you they are a performance upgrade, but at my level I beg to differ!
the clutch still needed all of the internals from the original, it is just a new basket, and so I needed to drill the rivets out of the original.
I would like to say it was easy, and i suppose it was, but it was also a bit time consuming as I didnt want to damaged the spring plate. Once the plate was removed it revealed the below site. I now had a bit of fun punching the rivet out, but being careful not to lose the spacers.
The new basket is bolted together, rather than riveting, so the next job was to drill out the holes to 10mm. In fact I turned the spacers as I thought it safer.
Next was just reassembly. Easy i thought. Until I found that I was supposed to have a new springplate. This was a bit annoying as it meant I have to down tools until I could order one on Monday morning.
I have now phoned and in fact I can use my original springplate. the modified one is only recommended for turbo engines. So I can now finished rebuilding the clutch and install it into the engine.
Tags: Clutch
