So I finally got around to replacing my clutch in preparation for my FI kit's arrival and wanted to post up a couple thoughts from the perspective of an occasional track day driver. I haven't taken the car to a track yet (installed it Christmas Day and it's now 2:50AM on the 26th) but have played around with it a bit and felt like it would be good to share a little.
First off my car is currently N/A with only an AP lightweight crank pulley, and a P&L Motorsports header back exhaust. So the FX400 is clearly overkill for this application at present (it's hold rating is 500 ftlbs of torque) but it's actually quite fun because the clutch and flywheel combo is lighter than stock. I tried to weigh the FX400 but my little bathroom scale apparently cant weigh anything 25lbs or less...so for the sake of argument I'm just gonna say that the FX400 is 25lbs +/- 2lbs...need to invest in a proper scale. The stock clutch and flywheel weighs in at 33.6lbs so we have a weight savings in rotational mass!!! YAY! How does it translate on the street...well this thing revs quick as hell now, and drops revs just as fast. As far as engine liveliness this is the path to take (I'd suggest an FX100 for stock engines!).
As far as actually driving in traffic or stoplight to stoplight the FX400 is a beast, not gonna lie. Pedal effort is high, modulating the friction zone is way harder, and if you don't give it enough gas the car will lurch...so you have to retune your mindset as far as driving this car. You can slip the clutch a little but it requires a conscious effort to do so...well at least for now while i am getting used to it.
All that said, this clutch is a lot of fun to drive with when you are accelerating hard, shifts are easy once the car is moving from a stop, because there is no slip between shifts you just dump and go. The pedal travel required to disengage the clutch is a lot shorter so the pedal pressure isnt a huge deal, in fact with practice you can feel the friction zone through the pedal way more than the stock setup. I've only come close to stalling the car one time and it was the first time I backed it out of the garage after install.
Some things to note:
Did a little burnout to see if it changed at all. The stock clutch could barely spin the rears before (I have Nitto Invos @ 255/35/18) due to slippage. With the FX400, it spun them up and kept spinning them up to redline, I bounced off the rev limiter a few times and shifted into second and got a nice little chirp. Not good for the diff I know but that's what you get with the kind of grip a 6 puck setup affords.
The clutch makes noise...it's not what I expected, because people said it would rattle on occasion, I just assumed it would rattle when the clutch was engaged. Well it's dead silent with the clutch in, the only time you hear the clutch is when you are in gear and decelerating using engine braking, and what you hear is a muffled rattle. I'm guessing it's the springs on the clutch disk that causes this but I'm no expert so someone might be able to clarify this for me. It's not a sound that is overly annoying as you can block it out just by having your radio on (not loud), but when driving with no radio it's noticeable...I kinda like it, goes with all the rattles and creaks that I have from running coilovers on camber plates and hard sidewall tires...it's another audio indication of what your car is doing.
So in conclusion, I am happy with my addition of a Clutchmasters FX400 clutch and flywheel kit. Not because it suits a N/A car but because it will certainly handle whatever my FI setup throws at it. It is way overkill for N/A and makes the car a bit harder to drive smoothly with the lack of power. We'll see how i feel after months of living with it and how it feels once I get the turbo kit installed and tuned.
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