A few weeks ago, I noticed my clutch pedal would vibrate occasionally. At first, I thought it was the pressure plate going out on me (had it happen before on another car), but eventually, I found the vibration would not go away when cruising. After some research, it appears my dual-mass flywheel is out of balance.

The car is an '05 S with 80k on the clock. It seems a bit premature that the flywheel would fail, along with a leaking supercharger PTO drive gearbox, but I digress ...

Lynne's got basic power bolt-ons (17% pulley, PRW crank pulley damper, 2.5" cat-back, UniChip, Madness CAI), and I'm not going for big power. If anything, I wanted to add an OBX header to round out my exhaust, and maybe step up to a Bytetronik tuner eventually in the future.

What are my options as far as clutch/flywheel replacements? I've read up on the Valeo and Exedy single-mass kits, but I haven't found any concrete info on how much power they can hold. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the flywheel and clutch disk/pressure plate on the Valeo and Exedy kits seem to have been designed for the R50s which have single-mass flywheels and sprung clutch disks. Thus, my doubts on their ability to last under approximately 200 WHP. I've heard stock clutches can take up to 250 (at the flywheel?), but I'm a little apprehensive about putting another dual-mass flywheel in.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

 

We've had many customers happy with the Valeo kit, it's the most affordable avail too.

 

Yes, I've been eyeing that kit for quite some time now. Were these designed specifically to convert R53s to a single-mass flywheel and sprung clutch disc system? Does the pressure plate have the same clamping force as stock? Does the throwout bearing have a nylon liner as opposed to the OEM throwout bearing, which is bare metal?

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

 

The TO bearing is the exact same as the OEM bearing.

 

I read somewhere that the TO bearing in the Valeo kits had a nylon sleeve inside to eliminate some of the noise associated with them. I can't remember where right now.

Regardless, the dual-mass flywheel is prohibitively expensive, and I can say for sure I'm going with a single-mass setup. Herein lies the question: Exedy or Valeo?

I've replaced OEM clutches with Exedy four times in the past and they have all held up pretty well. An Exedy OE replacement clutch even held up for around 25,000 miles in my 300 WHP AWD Eclipse which saw dozens of autocrosses and 10 HPDEs.

 

So can anyone chime in on how much power can be reliably put through the clutch on a single mass conversion kit?

 

Guess we'll find out how much power an exedy replacement kit with solid flywheel can take. Hopefully it holds up to an M45 with BPUs and a 17% pulley.

Now to find time to install it ...