Well this certainly does NOT look like the flywheel surface had anything to do with the failure. What do you guys think?

The flywheel side of the disc


Pressure plate side of the disc


More thumbnails and large detailed images of the clutch and components available at this link

Guess I need to find the phone number for the SPEC boys

 

wow! Is the kevlar completely worn off? How much material is missing from the flywheel side?

 

Doesn't look like whatever bonded the kevlar to the disk did it's job.

Steve

 

Kevlar is COMPLETELY GONE on the pressure plate side, that's a metal to metal scrape you see on that side of the disc.

The Flywheel side of the disc on the other hand, doesn't even look broken in.

Weird failure of the material huh?

 

Just sent the following email to the boys at SPEC clutch. We'll see how well they back up their warranty
************
My name is Lloyd Barnhill and in August I purchased a SPEC stage 2 clutch through Enhanced Street Performance in Sterling Mass. The clutch was drop shipped from your team directly to me and I installed this myself. ESP has indicated that due to the self install, I need to work directly with SPEC regarding the warranty. I submitted a note from the contact form on your website, but have not been contacted yet. Tried to phone on Saturday, but no one is in.

The clutch has barely 1700 miles on it, all to the grocery store and to work (zero abuse). The car has not been raced or even driven aggressively one single time in that distance. In the photographs at the URL below, you will see that the disc material completely disintegrated on the pressure plate side of the disc while the flywheel side does not even look broken in yet. Just prior to the complete failure, the clutch developed a "chatter" at initial release as though part of the friction material was slightly raised from the rest of the surface and/or a chunk of material was completely missing resulting in an uneven grab as it was making contact.

Please see the URL here for photos: http://offsiteresources.com/Mini_Clutch_Job/Spec_clutch_failure/SPEC_thu mbnails.htm

and a running online dialog at the NorthAmericanMotoring.com Mini forums is at this URL:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/showthread.php?p=660853#post 660853

My contact information is below. Please let me know who to contact and how to get this clutch replaced.

Best regards,
Lloyd Barnhill

 

After hearing your story and re-evaluating my opinion of how my clutch behaves, I have notice the inconsistant pedal pressure and creaking that lead me to change my clutch the first time. I too have emailed spec and hope they respond in a professional manner. I belive the issue to be related to the pressure plate and I am about to start searching for an alernative brand. please let me know if anyone knows of any.

 

I ended up phoning them as the email was not responded to by the next day. I talked to a "Daniel" who seems to be in charge of returns & warranty response. He gave me a return authorization number and I shipped the clutch. They should have received it Friday and I'll post again when I get a response from them.

In the meantime...... yeah.. I'd also like to know what else is out there in the way of aftermarket clutches and what experiences have users with them? For the time being I put an OEM clutch back in. Replaced the steering rack while I was in there due to a leak and should have it back on the road tomorrow (Sunday, 9 October).

cheers,
Lloyd

 

Looks like they're good for their warranty. The new clutch and pressure plate arrived today.

I've already put it all back together with an OEM clutch and been driving it for a week. Considering that this is a totally stock Mini (not even an 'S'), I'm just going to run the OEM clutch till it wears out.

Anyone want this clutch before I put it on ebay? I'll post it here in NAM till the weekend. If no takers, I'll put it up out on the auction.

It was $358 from ESP. First $200 plus shipping can have it. I think shipping was about $10 when I sent the first one back to SPEC. Clutch is posted on NAM at this link for anyone interested.

Cheers,
Lloyd

 

I see it will only fit the non s - darn, ignore the pm

mike

 

I'm curiuos Lloyd, I recall during my install that there was a indication (a sticker attached to one side) as to which side of the clutch needed to face the flywheel. Not to point blame at you but I wonder if there is dimensional difference from one side to another thereby causing contact to only one surface if mounted incorrectly. Just wondering...

 

Yeah, it's marked on the FW side and that was installed correctly. The guys at SPEC said they had no explanation for it. Just odd.