What a surprise right?….This is getting really annoying.  Below is my whole thought process through this, some of it is more for my own understanding later down the road, but I’m open to ideas.

The situation:
The clutch had been making some excessive noise this past summer and occasionally a strange feeling pedal so I told my self I’d tear it apart and check out whats going on.  I wanted to see how my new pilot bearing was doing and was expecting to find a bad throw-out bearing due to the strange clutch feel and noise…boy was I wrong!  For starters, the pressure plate had bent teeth (see picture below). So I took this off and inspected the clutch disc and pilot bearing, the disc looked like it was about to strip out AGAIN and the pilot bearing was nearly completely trashed.

Alright, my first thought is something isn’t aligned properly as it should NOT be doing this.  Looking deeper into the problem I noticed that the pressure plate teeth weren’t bent but that the pressure plate friction surface was crooked inside the housing.  I was able to hit the friction surface a couple times and it straightened out which in turn corrected the teeth.  When I inspected the flywheel it appeared to have a little hot spot where the friction disk was closest to the flywheel.

My conclusion to this whole problem is now pointing entirely to a defective/bad pressure plate.  I’m surprised to say this as I’ve always heard ACT was a very good brand.  Due to the somewhat seized pressure plate, it was creating an unequal amount of force on the clutch disk, more so on the one side, which normally would have an equal and opposite friction force on the full face of the disk.  However, due to the uneven clamping load there was a smaller friction force on the opposing side of the clutch disk. This caused the input shaft to be pressed against the pilot bearing, wearing it much more than it normally would.  As it wore the input shaft would be forced off-axis and cause added friction between the input shaft and clutch splines.

This huge chain reaction almost brought me to strip out ANOTHER clutch disk and input shaft.  So glad I caught it before it ruined another transmission. Reason’s I do not suspect alignment issues as much are simply due to the fact that everything lines up very nicely when assembled, and more so due to the fact that the pressure plate was obviously seized and from what I remember the RPS pressure plate was perfectly fine when this happened the first time.

Solutions to this problem are going to be a new clutch (again…) and redesigning the pilot bearing just in case (again…); the new clutch will instead be a Comp Clutch Strip Series 0420.  I will also be re-machining the flywheel spacer to press fit a bronze sleeve into, then a new Nismo roller pilot bearing will be lightly pressed into the sleeve after making sure everything is concentric.  Let the fun begin!

What’s left of the bearing.

And what the splines of the ACT clutch disk looked like, as you can see they were getting very worn and sharp.

In other news, I got material to get my subframe spacers made.  Work is scheduled to be done on Friday!

Also got some drift spares with tax return $$, tires should be coming tomorrow!
XXR 527 – 18×9.75 +20 (they sent me one with a +25 offset… hopefully to be corrected soon)

Sooo i will give you a glimps into the future of what is to come. Entire drivetrain will be ripped out within a week or so. Subframe will come out as i will be making and installing some solid risers. The engine/trans is coming out to freshen up some stuff that has been neglected over the past two years. The exhaust is starting to rust and i need to replace the throwout bearing, BAD. I also would like to check on my pilot bearing I made a couple years ago.

In the meantime, until I update with pictures and info from that session, enjoy this fancy tune I found.
Party.

I ended up winning a contest FOTOmotive was holding which resulted in me getting a free rig-shoot with these guys!  They always always ALWAYS come out to our drift events and do work.  I love these guys to death so naturally I’d like to help these guys out.  They do some fantastic work, and there is plenty of it to go around.  Want some pictures of you car or bike taken? Check them out!  Top notch stuff and really great to work with.  Here’s some of the images they took of my car during the rig shoot.  Really happy with how they all came out and will even be getting a nice poster-sized print out of at least one of them.

Show these guys some love at their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/FOTOmotive

They regularly post drifting photos throughout the summer there so if you see your car and want a print get ahold of them.  I know they would be more than happy to do that for you, and for a reasonable price too!  Professional print, frames, whatever you need.

I will leave you with some pictures.

vvv  I think this one is my all-time favorites.  vvv

Read the story, pretty crazy and i really feel for the guy.

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2278180

So… summer break officially began for me last Friday evening.  I ended up having one of the best weekends ever with a ton of friends at graduation parties, going away parties, etc.  Now all i can think about is getting out and driving.  I cannot wait to get my car back!  Ran across this little experimental video i made when i first got my GoPro.  Kind of a cool sight to see i thought.

I saw this on the jumbosandbox blog and really like what they are trying to do.  They have set up a relief project for Japan, in addition to your donation they will send you a sticker. I will be sending my $5 off soon!  You should do the same.

Here is the original post on their blog for convenience as it has all of the information.

Link: http://jumbosandbox.blogspot.com/2011/03/heartbreaker-for-japan-relief-project.html

Ended up making a stop back in Minnesota last week on my way back from a school competition.  Got to go see my buddy Brandon at Renown Performance.  I also got to drive my car, it’s been so long and feels very different from the Chrysler Town & Country LXI i’ve been driving hahaha.  It gave me drifting fever again and I’m getting anxious for the summer to come.

Here’s a few video’s I checked out lately.  Definitely a cool series/documentary and makes me want in the action even more.

Nate Hamilton 144 Part One from Corey Denomy on Vimeo.

Nate Hamilton 144 part two from Corey Denomy on Vimeo.

Nate Hamilton 144 part three from Corey Denomy on Vimeo.

Went and spent a good amount of time at the Counts Car Show this past weekend to help my bud Kris out as he had to go out of town for a family emergency.  My condolences go out to him and his family.

On a lighter note his car was looking real good and definitely drew some attention throughout the weekend.  These aren’t my pictures as i forgot to bring a camera, but here’s some of my favorite cars of the show.

I hadn’t ever been to this car show here in Rapid even though I’ve been going to school here for nearly 5 years now.  I have to say i was really surprised to see as many custom cars as i did.

Some of the photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39532593@N03/

Kris, looking real clean and lowww

Everyone was drooling over this SS including me.

Guy said he built this thing for under 2k… built the whole wood body out of a log he had lying around on his property and the engine is a v12 from a jaguar he happened to have lying around… so awesome.

Wagon love.   Oh yeah, it had an LS in it as well.