Long time no post. Things have been stressful!
It's now 2 weeks until my wedding, to which I am driving the A3, and until last night, it was unable to move under it's own steam.
With the box out, it was pretty apparent that the plate was dead.
The first thing that struck me, was that the plate was a 228mm plate, instead of the 240 it should be on an 02M setup!
The pressure plate only had a 228mm friction surface also.
the flywheel LOOKED large enough to accept a 240mm clutch, but without a stock 02M pressure plate as a sample I didn't want to risk ordering an 02M clutch kit and hoping it'd work on this SMF.
At this point,
@StaceyS3 stepped in to the rescue and offered to send me his old Southbend SMF and paddle clutch, in exchange for a future deal against my 17" Rotas when I move over to 18's later this year.
With a wedding coming up in 3 weeks (as it was at the time) money wasn't exactly plentiful, so this offer was a bit of a life saver!
It arrived promptly as promised:
I stripped it down and set about giving it a good clean up to check condition. Stacey had previously had issues with an organic drive plate and it had got hot in a few spots, but after a little work it came up looking pretty clean and all the surfaces are flat and smooth:
The pressure plate came up OK too. I could have got this gleaming, but for something that's going to be hidden away and dirty in a few miles there seemed little point!
The only down side, and absolutely not Staceys fault in any way at all, is that the edges of the Southbend 6 paddle drive plate were starting to break up, probably due to his 500bhp and 4wd. it served him well!
Whilst it would still work, and clearly did work when it came out of Staceys S3, I wasn't comfortable with the amount of missing material, and the chances of the issue progressing quickly once it's started. There was also a balance issue to consider if substantially large chunks were to come off individual paddles. After consulting a few people, I decided against fitting it.
This left me with a great SMF and pressure plate, but no drive plate. it was Thursday night, and i ONLY had Sunday to get it fitted. My time is so short at the moment, working every hour under the sun, finalising wedding arrangements, and actually trying to spend at least SOME time with my lovely wife to be. Delaying wasn't an option. The box WAS going in on Sunday.
I had a few frantic calls on Friday trying to source something, with no success. Bill was very helpful, he had solid plates, but nothing sprung on the shelf. I wasn't sure about an unsprung plate on an SMF, and didn't want to risk paying full price on something that may not work.
Alex at AKS had sprung plates but they were for a Helix system of his and too thick to work in my setup.
CG sadly didn't get back to me despite a few calls.
Getting desperate, I turned to facebook, and found that Imran (I'm sure he's on here - really nice hybrid LCR) in Sutton Colefield had a 4 paddle helix plate in stock thickness!
He had run it with a stock DMF and cover, and found it a little too grabby for daily use, so removed it without too much use. It had plenty of life left in it, and he was asking a very reasonable price for it, so with no other time spare, I jumped in the van at 6am on Sunday and set off on a 300 mile round trip to collect it!
Back home and straight to work!
Clutch plate in place:
Pressure plate on:
Going well so far.
I went to swap over the slave cylinder, as mine was feeling fairly tired, and the existing slave in my box WOULD NOT budge. Despite all the bolts being out, it was very happy where it was, and took almost an hour of butchering with hammers, screwdrivers, all sorts to get it off.
That was an annoying waste of an hour. No pics. I was angry.
Eventually, I got that done, and set up the chain hoist to lift the box into place:
After struggling for a LONG time lifting from a single point, I realised it was no use.
I consulted a few friends, who all confirmed it needed the 'diff up and in' method to get into place. I'd been trying this, but lifting from a single point it just wasn't possible.
I had a rethink, and decided to string a line front to rear on the box, then lift from that line.
This worked great, as I was able to rotate the box on the line whilst it was in the air, allowing me to raise the diff, lift it into place, and finally mate it back onto the engine!
No pics again, as I was losing the will to live by this point, but it was a pretty huge relief when it was finally back into place!