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The pressure plate bolts are torqued down in three steps in a cross pattern.
Once the pressure plate bolts are tight, the clutch alignment tool is pulled out and the clutch is installed!
The new throw-out bearing is on top and the factory part is on the bottom.
You can see how the factory throw-out bearing retaining clips capture the throw-out fork better. This helps prevent the bearing from falling off the fork when trying to reinstall the tranny. We have had this happen a few times before and it sucks and wastes a lot of time. To solve this we simply installed the factory clips on the new throw-out bearing and threw the non factory clips in the trash.
We broke in our clutch with about 100 easy commuting miles, then drove the car the hundred miles to Willow Springs raceway. This was not exactly the 300 recommend break in miles but the clutch was getting pretty smooth and we really wanted to go to the track. We figured that a bumper to bumper driving break in was a really fast way to do it regardless of the miles.
photo credit: uriasbro_trackmafia, Instagram
In daily use, our Competition Clutch Stage III clutch is working great, it has a tiny bit of chatter over the stock clutch and is a little more grabby but it’s not even close to slipping and will last for years with our 200 whp NA engine. The clutch pedal is light and easy to modulate even with semi metallic/ceramic friction material puck type friction material.
The lightweight flywheel seems perfectly manageable even in bumper to bumper traffic and you can feel the improved acceleration in 1-3 gears easily. Fast shifts are cleaner and the gear mesh isn’t as notchy.
The Clutch seems fine on the track and street and it’s nice to know that it could easily handle the addition of a Turbo all the way up to it’s 500 lb/ft torque capacity.
We have no qualms with wholeheartedly recommending this clutch for mixed track and street use with this clutch and you can be confident that the SE-R’s glass like tranny will shatter long before this clutch will!
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