Yesterday I was sitting in traffic during my lunch break, thinking about how much I like my Centerforce Dual Friction clutch. Went in to dunk's to get my coffee, came back out, and had no pressure in the clutch pedal. Clutch has always grabbed in the middle of the pedal travel, but now it's grabbing all the way up top. Push the clutch down an inch and it's revving in gear. Felt like I was driving a Mazda. Pedal also felt "ratchety". Not smooth at all.

Brought it back to work, plenty of fluid in the master, clutch fork moving normally. Ruled out hydraulic failure. Does it sitting still, pressing pedal with trans in neutral. Ruled out clutch disk. Pivot ball sitting pretty in bellhousing, not backed out. WTF HAPPENED TO MY PRESSURE PLATE???

Had one of the more experienced techs feel the pedal during work today. He confirmed my thoughts on the hydraulics being fine. The weird thing, though, the pedal feels a lot better after sitting overnight, but still grabbing higher than normal. Took it out for a spin and its slipping in the higher RPM's.

I put it up on the lift after work today, everything attached to trans has been taken out/disco'd. Have to wait till tomorrow to get another set of hands to drop the trans. I took the clutch fork boot off of the bellhousing and peeked in, looks like the weights aren't evenly spaced around the input shaft of the trans. Several seemed to be sitting lower than the other ones. Not sure, though, as I couldn't get a great look through the half inch of space between the fork and the bellhousing.

Kinda seems like my pressure plate took a dump on me, but I'm definitely open to other opinions. The thing that gets me, though, is I just put the new engine and clutch in about 400 miles ago. Drove it hard a couple times, but no trips to the track, no dumping the clutch, no thrashing within an inch of it's life. Did I do something wrong, or did I just get a bad clutch out of the box?

Oh yeah. 90 day warranty from Centerforce. Bought it February 2, it is now June 23, crapped out with 400 miles on it. Shoot me now please.

 

Did you torque the pressure plate to flywheel bolts to what ever they call for?
Never seen it before but your problems sound like what would happen if those came loose.

 

Yep, torqued them all to spec, used lock washers AND red loctite.

 

A common failure on Centerforces is their special ring of weights will move off center and get stuck, causing all kinds of problems.

 

Yeah, I'm thinking that's what may have happened. I pulled the tranny out and didn't see anything broken, but the weights were off to one side. Took the pressure plate off, and instead of the "fingers" gradually coming out there was a snap and they jumped out about a half inch. Looks like I'll be running the dual friction clutch disc with the old heavy duty pressure plate I had before.

 

Step up to a Mcleod. no ring weights to worry about.