I'm wondering what is the importance of the pilot bearing in your flywheel? I know that the input shaft from your tranny slides inside of it, but I'm wondering how important it is to have and what may happen if you run/race without the pilot bearing.

The reason I ask is my buddy has an 01 Civic LX and he goes through trannies like one every year and he destroys his clutches in like 9 months. He got an ACT street light flywheel and had his friend put it in, but he didn't put in a pilot bearing and so I'm wondering if that could be a reason why his trannies and clutches just go to crap so fast. Now the clutches are Ram Clutch stage 1, so they may just suck ***, but I can't imagine that nearly brand new trannies blow up like this that fast. Please any input is appreciated.
Lates, Davey

 

Uh... yeah, the pilot bearing is important. It adds stabilizing support to the input shaft. Without that added support, the input shaft will probably wobble slightly when the clutch grabs. The first problem you'd see is complete input shaft bearing failure.

 

 

See that's what I though... I don't think his Input shaft bearings have had issues though... It's just the syncros and gears... But then again I guess it could be the Main shaft moving slightly add causing that.