Some background: 1998 Civic with an edelbrock turbo charged D16Y8 motor. Received a new Spec Stage 3, 6 Puck clutch and put it in. Ran the clutch normal for about 500 miles. 1 week. Tried to launch the car Sunday and the clutch went out. Well, took the clutch out and this is what I found.

Has anyone ever seen a pressure plate do this?

 

nope never seen that before, are there suppose to be holes like that in the pressure plate ? cause ive never seen that before, but then again ive never really seen a clutch other then stock

 

what brand pressure plate is that?....those holes were the weak point..never seen a plate like that : honda2:

 

Opps, It's a SPEC pressure plate. Stage 3, 6 puck clutch.

Here's the pictures I took before installing.

 

yeah thats kinda week is the holes... hmm most i have seen never had holes like act clutchmasters etc.

 

Ive never heard of Spec? Maybe thats the problem...and drilling holes in the plate seems kinda weird...

 

They are used in a lot of domestic drag cars. This one has a great feel and good grab to it. Guess to much grab for the pressureplate

http://www.specclutch.com/specMain.html

 

That looks like a horrible design for a pressure plate...hopefully they did a stress analysis on the part before going to market, but it looks like you simply had a failure of the pressure plate friction surface either from the holes drilled in it for the bolts, or because of the quality of the pressure plate surface.

Here's a link to my recent experience with a Clutchnet clutch, where I killed it:
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=701147

Austin

 

return the clutch back that some **** if you ask me.. get ACT or Clutchmaster or Action wont have any problems with them cost little more but they are worth it in the long run

 

Never seen holes in a pressure plate before. Wonder what it suppost to do. Looks to me thats the reason why it failed.

 

i was reading there website seems to be soemthing what they call


"Remove additional rotating mass with our lightweight clutch option for $79.!"

screw that **** makes it looke weak to me

 

I sent the clutch back to them today and I did get the lightweight option first. Don't see how those holes cost 79 bucks to make. Hell I could have done better just drilling 2 holes then it would have only broken into 2 big pieces. LOL

 

yeah no damn joke stick with the normal option that should be much better

 

I have personally never used a Spec clutch but there is a bunch of cars around here with them and they all seem happy. A single turbo supra, corvettes, a bunch of ls-1's and a few awd dsm's. I know the DSM guys love them.

 

I love it while it worked. Has a stock feeling pedal pressure! Actually it felt alot smoother than the stock one.

 

I got a brand new Act Xtreme plate for sale. In case your interested

 

I just sent this one off with the disk :D I would need the disk and plate. I do have an ACT 8.4lb flywheel.

 

I have the disk also,

 

Yup, those guys are just up the street. They have called on us to sell their clutches, need to pass on the lightweight option though.

 

This happened to another member not too long ago. Not sure of the brand of clutch though.

-Ryan

 

Spec Clutches really really suck, Mark brauning told me about his experiance with one he got one for free (they wanted to run a small sponser for him) and he ran an event with it and it exploded. ******* junk is all it is

 

Ill show you our Clutch Master Stage 4 clutch that exploded like that. Cant seem the find the pics that i took. That looks mild compared to mine.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by camp1320.com &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Ill show you our Clutch Master Stage 4 clutch that exploded like that. Cant seem the find the pics that i took. That looks mild compared to mine. </TD></TR></TABLE>

I also got act that exploded too out the tranny as well. It just somethign to do with the ligthweight option on there that made it weak i am not sure why spec does that. I also heard great thigns from the supra and dsm guys


Modified by b18bturbo at 9:48 AM 12/11/2003

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 99blackcivicSi &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Spec Clutches really really suck, Mark brauning told me about his experiance with one he got one for free (they wanted to run a small sponser for him) and he ran an event with it and it exploded. ******* junk is all it is </TD></TR></TABLE>

There's a ton of satisfied people with spec clutches. If you actually knew something about them before spouting off "they're junk", you probably wouldn't be saying that. There are more people than you think on this board that use the EXACT same clutch and have not had any problems. It appears that the lightweight option actually weakened the clutch. Is this a common problem with ALL of the pressure plates? NO. So dont say they're junk when you've only had an experience with ONE of them.

 

Talked to SPEC today. They'll be sending out another one without the lightened option :D