Re: Mk1 F4R/172'd Track Car Project
Cadwell was on the 7th July - near perfect and I was running the Superleggeras without any problems after some of the holes looked a bit iffy after Rockingham. The car was driving better than it ever has, especially the feel of the brakes with the new servo/cylinder setup. I raised the front of the car by about 5-10mm after the first two sessions as I was getting a vibration on hard right handers, which disapperared after raising it so it must have been bodywork related
Out on the fourth session and about 10 laps done, coming upto the hairpin I could not get any gears at all - managed to get it off the track just at the hairpin and through the gate. Tried to bump start it in 1st but couldnt get 2nd to make it back to the paddock. Ended up getting a tow - initially thinking it was the clutch cable or pedal setup broken... After a few hours of messing with it (literally), and trying various different things thinking it was the pedal nothing seemed to work.
I left the car and just wandered around/took pictures in the afternoon, trying to figure out how I was going to get the car home. I decided to leave it at Cadwell overnight as we already had a hotel booked for the night. Got a lift back to Cadwell in the morning and towed the car out of the gate - then rang the RAC. I emptied all the stuff from my car, all I had was some food. The RAC showed up a few hours later and point blank refused to recover my car (bearing in mind they did 5+ times last year from all over the country) - saying I had been on track. I asked the guy to proove how I was, considering I told him I was there watching the bikes on the day (Bike trackday on) - but he could not give me an answer and just kept going on saying they are not going to recover me as they think ive been on track. The car was road wheels too!
Told the guy fair enough and walked off to try and find some telephone numbers for private recovery companies, as I had no other choice at the time! All the prices were coming back at £350+, which was just out of the question. Some of the other people we did the trackday came back to Cadwell considering I was stuck there and we decided to use one of the other lads AA, or at least give it a try. I had to try and get the car away from Cadwell, so ended up driving it for 25+ miles without the clutch and not stopping until I got to a lay-by. The others then f*cked off and we called the AA at 2pm, who came out and eventually got us home (thank f*ck) at around 9pm by a-frame'ing it all the way back 160 miles.
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The next day I set about trying to find out what the problem was - the clutch fork was very very loose with the cable removed, nothing like it used to be. I thought it had come away from the release bearing by its position as it was a long way off what it used to sit at...
And could be twised to quite some angle left and right. Anyway I pulled the engine out first thing...
The clutch fork had gone really sloppy after the problems at cadwell, with lots of play like the bearing was f*cked. It physically looked ok but the bearing itself had lots of play and was notchy to spin. After removing the box the first thing I saw was...
There was lots of clutch material in the bell housing and trapped between the forks of the pressure plate. As you can see in the pictures the plate forks were seated oddly too, even though all the 6 mounting bolts were still tight and torqued up!
Removed the pressure plate and took a look at the clutch plate itself...
Flipped it over...
Zero clutch material attached to the plate on the pressure plate side, but the flywheel side looked in normal condition? Also, the springs in the clutch plate itself were very loose. Not entirely sure whats happened! There were some wear marks which I guess are from the rivets on the plate...
But in general the whole thing was f*cked. Got on the phone to Euro Car Parts and ordered a replaement OEM (Valeo) clutch kit which I managed to blag for £90 over their high normal price...
Cleaned up all the clutch material from the housing and around the engine then fitted the new clutch/release bearing...
And them lifted the engine back into place...
Re-fitted everything, driveshafts/box oil/coolant/wiring/clutch cable/etc and then took it for a drive, all fine
Clutch feels a lot lighter too, like there is less force required for the pressure plate to be applied - I guess either thats because its brand new or the old one was f*cked, not sure! When driving the car seems to pull a lot harder from 3k upwards, maybe I had clutch slip before and was just used to it so never noticed?
Really dont know what caused the problem with the clutch as it was driving perfectly fine before it went, then all of a sudden just could not get any gears - very very wierd but would really like to find out as I dont want anything similar happening again!
