Please Help Me Diagnose My Clutch

[Jeremy Billiel]

Last summer I replaced my clutch with a Exedy organic stage 1 replacement. Unfortunately, since my GSR can't see the street, there is no way to break in the clutch. Well needless to say it grabbed with no problems at the track, but it was making a weird sound. Kinda like the sound when you put on a new timing belt and its a little tight. When you engage the clutch you hear a noise. Like friction material noise. To me I thought I overheated the clutch and perhaps glazed the surface material. But if I did this than it would slip. So I have the tranny out anyways and I pulled out the clutch. Does anything look out of the ordinary here? The clutch has about 300 miles on it.



There is no surface rust at all and the flywheel is good and straight. Both the PP and Flywheel have these spots on them that carb cleaner will not take off. There are no grooves, etc either. There is a gold haze though on the both pieces as if it was glazed or somthing... =( =(

 

[CRXsi]

If the noise is when pushing the clutch pedal down it is likely either your release bearing or your pilot bearing in the end of the crank making noise....hard to say for sure without hearing it but I would look there. The spots on the flywheel and pressure plate look like mild surface rust? Or are they possibly just some heat spots (looks more like rust in the photo's) but don't really look like a huge concern.

 

[Jeremy Billiel]

If the clutch is to the floor and not engauged there is no noise. The noise is when I am feathering the clutch. Once its engaged there was no slipage and seemed fine.

I checked the throw out bearing and this seemed good as well, but how do you test it?



The car sits more many months of the year, so is a little rust abnormal?

 

[CRXsi]

So the noise is on initial and partial clutch pedal depression? This kinda sounds like a release bearing issue to me. Usually what happens is that when the initial load is placed on the bearing it is noisiest and sometimes is gone when the clutch is pressed fully. Pilot bearing is usually more noticeable when the clutch pedal is fully depressed.

It still could be something else and again without having heard or experienced the problem first hand it is a best guess effort at this but I would recommend getting yourself a good (OEM Honda) release bearing and put it in. There really isn't too much of a way to test it out of the car as it is hard to exert the same forces in the same way as when it is being driven. The first obvious sign would be if it feels rough when spinning it by hand...many times a bad bearing feels fine by hand however. I have also seen release bearing where the housing develop a hairline crack in the inner race/housing and causes weird issues on both the trans snout as well as noise. I have also had bearing that become noisy due to a fault internally.

If you put a new bearing in and it is still noisy then maybe drive it a little while to see if it is just a layer of something on the friction material that needs to wear off (unlikely however). The only other possibility that comes to mind is if your mainshaft imput bearing in the transmission is starting to go. I have replaced many imput shfat bearings on Civics and Integras, they usually are noisiest however when driving in 1st gear with the clutch pedal fully released (foot off clutch completly) or with trans in neutral and reving...not usually when putting foot on clutch.

As far as the surface rust thing...it is normal, especially for a car that sits. Normal temp swings and condensation causes moisture to form and then turns to surface rust, humidity where you live can also factor in. Usually what happens is when you drive the car for a little bit the rust gets worn off similar to surface rust on brake rotors.

Keep us posted on what you find and with any luck it is just the release bearing.