Hey guys,

A few weeks ago, the pilot bearing failed and welded itself into the e-shaft. Previous owner didnt install a seal and no grease. Since I was going to be there I decided to change out the clutch.
Ive seen some questions about the F1 Racing/Fidanza/Grip Force clutch kits around the forums and all I saw were answers like “You get what you pay for” or “They suck, get an exety” but no real answers. So I would give them a try. I figured what could go wrong? I'll be the guinea pig. Its only money. If nothing else, I figured I post my results on here and we would know for sure.

Ordered from Project Gtr on ebay and got a F1 Racing aluminum flywheel and stage 3 clutch + pressure plate.



























Borrowed my buddies lift and towed my car over there. Removing the transmission was a pain but got it all tore down. Went to install and didnt notice anything wrong. Everything went together smoothly.

continued in next post

 

Started it up and there was a big problem. There was a BIG knocking coming from the clutch and clutch wouldnt engage. Tore it back apart again and found that the pressure plate was so much bigger that it was hitting the bell housing next to the starter.


F1 racing on the left, Exety Stage 2 on the right




Inside the bell housing (sorry for the blurry cell phone pic)


On top of that issue, the clutch was spinning in the pressure plate. It wasnt touching the flywheel or pressure plate at all. Installed the exety stage 2 and found the problem wasnt with the pressure plate, but with the flywheel. The friction surface was lower than where the pressure plate bolts up than it was on the stock flywheel.

Installed the stock flywheel and exety stage 2 clutch and was done with it.

Trying to get my money back now. Not going very well.

 

wow that sucks man. i was thinking about getting one of those too, thanks for posting this up. good luck.

 

Thanks for posting up your experience.

Sucks you had to go through that, but I'm not surprised. Exedy, ACT, or go home..... IMO of course.

 

you get what you pay for.




problem sounds like a mismatch of turbo and non turbo parts, FYI.

 

I wasnt expecting much out of these parts. Im planning to do a turbo2 trans and rear end soon and was just hoping to get the car up and running for sevenstock. I already had the exety for another project so it wasnt a big problem just to put that in there.

Good news though. The seller fought me giving me my money back but ebay really did the right thing and gave me a full refund.