That’s the 3rd guid tube in almost as many weeks that’s fucked like that.
Best advise is don’t skim the flywheel either. They don’t respond well to that and it makes them a potential point of failure - especially if they take too much meat off.
Welp, should've listened to your advice better... I have an issue, and at the end, I have my plan for a potential solution, and I'd appreciate it if you could let me know how feasible it is.
The Problem
I'm currently experiencing an awful clutch with juddering when pulling off, not as violent as when I first got the car, but enough to mess up the dogbone which I had to replace, and it the replacement even looks like it needs replacing soon. Here's what happened:
- When we took the gearbox out, my flywheel didn't look great as it had plenty of grooves in it and seems a lot of material got eaten away (not by skimming). It still had a raised surface where the clutch disc contacts it but as I said before, the material inside that area was worn down what felt like quite significantly and had plenty of grooves. Here's a picture:
- The clutch disc only had friction material on some of it, the rest must have broken off:
- I saw an ad on the Renault RS Club of South Africa Facebook page about a guy that reconditions RS clutch kits, and after contacting the guy he quoted me less than half the price of a new clutch kit for a reconditioned kit and flywheel skim.
- I asked him whether he could do it without skimming the flywheel, but he refused, claiming and I quote: 'The Flywheel must be skimmed 32 Years Experience..really are welcom to view our work on facebook page, and see for yourself how many Renault clutches we did..the skimm is necessary, and you dont have to worry we are not taking of milimeters its still going to be standard,is to check all the heights because linings thickness differ..'
Anyway, I decided to throw caution to the wind and go ahead with the reconditioning, as the surface of the flywheel as it stood didn't look like it would work nicely with a new clutch kit alone, even if I roughed it up with some emery cloth. Here's a before (left) and after (right) of my clutch kit and flywheel:
When I got it back, he had machined the flywheel surface down to where there's no raised portion at all, the entire flywheel was flat. However, the clutch disc material was apparently made thicker to compensate. In his words: 'we use very strong linings got copper in,use it also on trucks..', ' its very thick linings that we use'. When I showed the picture to someone else, they commented that due to the high copper content it looks almost like a button racing clutch instead of a street clutch. This is a daily driver street car, so that's not desirable. The surface of both the flywheel and pressure plate both had visible machining marks that could also be felt.
Either way, we put the flywheel and clutch kit back on the car, but in following the Renault guide, we didn't grease the spigot shaft AT ALL, not even a thin film of it:
Right now the clutch pedal creaks and doesn't press in smoothly if you press it slowly and has tiny but noticable jumps in its travel (maybe the clutch disc is binding on the splines of the spigot shaft?). We did however, use molybdenum grease on the new guide tube and thrust bearing. BTW, the new guide tube had a somewhat rough, cast surface, is that alright?
At first, the clutch felt fine enough, but it's been about 600 miles and the juddering when pulling off just got progressively worse and worse, now requiring you to accelerate hard and intentionally ride the clutch and burn it in order for it not to judder your face off.
Idea for a Solution
Since finding a replacement flywheel is nearly impossible, my father had another plan:
Have an engineer machine the flywheel so that area surrounding the mating surface of the flywheel is raised in order to restore the deck height. Since the bolt holes for the pressure plate are countersunk, redo the countersinking so the pressureplate sits how it used to. Have them skim the surface slightly before doing that to make sure its straight and true, and once everything is done, ensure the surface isn't too rough.
I'm curious to know what you think of that idea, I'd just need the height difference between the deck and the rest of the flywheel to do it, would you happen to know what that is on a brand new flywheel? I don't have many alternatives in South Africa unfortunately, apart from a used flywheel that's several hundred miles away and needs to be paid for in advance, here's a picture of that flywheel, it looks like the right one to me but I'll leave that for you to judge:
