At about 63k miles my clutch was showing signs that it wasn’t long for this world... first there was no immediate torque in switching up to 4th then the same started happening into 5th. On March 20th I was driving up a hill onto a roof top car park and couldn’t get it over the lip (just the nastiest grinding sound in either 1st/ 2nd with no forward momentum at all). I felt lucky to get Benny home and knew it shouldn’t be on the road other than to get it to the shop. I really wanted to do the clutch myself but had far too many weeks/ weekends of work and travel and didn’t want to have it parked for that long.
I did a lot of digging and all evidence pointed to the clutch despite the relatively low mileage. Then I factored in its age as well as teaching a 16 year old to drive stick over the last six months and it all started to make more sense.
From all the insights and testimonials here landed on an ACT HD clutch, 13.5lb lightweight flywheel plus replacing the rear main seal, new slave and master and a new clutch line. Of course since I’d decided that was the only route I was going it turned out the clutch was on back-order. So Benny was going to be parked until the parts came in. I also had another quick work trip to the UK (sadly no time to see James or any other MX5-nutters this time around) but it helped take my mind off being roadster-less…
London’s still one of my favorite cities.. especially when blessed with exceptional spring weather.
I had some help procuring the parts thanks to an awesome guy from KINOD…
…and the car finally went into Integrated Performance first thing Thursday morning.
About 9am I got a call from Alex to let me know I’d ordered the wrong flywheel. Clearly got my wires crossed but had thought their Street Lite flywheel would work with the 1.6 clutch but no. Didn’t want to go lighter (eg. Fidanza) so had the OEM flywheel resurfaced.
Still managed to pick up the car super late on Thursday night. Clutch was well and truly worn…
But I finally had Benny back! The bite point took a little getting used to as pick-up was immediate but took all of about three four way stops for me to be loving it.
Back just in time for one commute to work before flying out on the red-eye to Palooza!!!
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