silenceikillyou

I'm not sure what happened here, but I'll start from the beginning. Car has (had) a SPEC stage 2 clutch and flywheel. I noticed the clutch wouldn't engage. Brought it in to a buddy of mine who works on cars and he dropped the trans last night and called me up today to go check it out.

Anyways, the clutch is fried, which I expected. Gonna replace all of that with an Exedy Mach 500 clutch and flywheel.

He did point something out to me, which he doesn't know if it's a problem or not, and he urged me to get it checked out before we put the transmission back in. Beings that I'm not an idiot and listen to people who know more than me, I'm trying to figure this out:



See the "waves" in the spline shaft? Neither one of us have no clue if that's normal or not. The clutch still slides on the shaft nicely when straight, but there is a little "play" in it, in which the clutch can **** and bind.

Would it be better for me to wait for the new clutch to come in and see if it may be a play issue in the old clutch, or should I bring the transmission in to a shop to get looked at?

dawson1112

Don't worry about it, there will be no play when its all put together, and the input shaft is resting in the pilot bearing. The clutch will be sandwiched between the pressure plate and fly wheel. As long as the input shaft is not twisted its fine.

silenceikillyou

I want to be sure, because I don't want to have to bring it back if it turns out to be the problem.....

dawson1112

I would be more concerned with the input shaft bearing.

Can you move the input shaft in/out or does it flop around side to side and hit the throw out bearing sleeve?

That wavey pattern is just tooling marks made in the machining process. When they cut the splines the machine always leave variations in the material. Some have a very noticeable wavey pattern while others have very little. When the machinist starts a run the tool is fresh and sharp, as it wears it starts to cause this pattern, they will continue to run until they reach a thresh hold of tolerance , then change out tooling. This can also be contributed to programing of the feed speed and tooling rpm. Its basically caused from inconsistent tool pressure due to tooling wear and programing of feed rate and tooling rotational speed.
Very common to see slight variations in finish from one shaft to the next.

Here you see distinct variations between 2 different shafts, notice the machining pattern on both.

silenceikillyou

The difference I'm seeing is the tool marks only apper to be where my clutch would ride. Close to the throw out bearing, it looks smooth. Wouldn't tool marks be showing on the entire length of the spline?

dawson1112

That's because its starting to taper down to a smaller diameter.

silenceikillyou

Yep, just looked at the pic wrong. It's been a long week. Appreciate the info man.