rv8 with lt77 clutch info

chris-stockton · Post by **chris-stockton** » Thu Mar 14, 2013 10:16 am

Hi guys, my box is away at the moment getting rebuilt - but i did also have a noisy clutch release bearing so want to replace that while its all out. Im not sure of the exact spec of clutch thats in the car as there is no receipt for it - but would it just be a standard release bearing? from say a tvr with a rv8 in it?

Cheers

Chris

unstable load · Post by **unstable load** » Fri Mar 15, 2013 6:12 am

Logic would dictate that it is standard, but I would take the old
one with me as a sample when buying the replacement.

chris-stockton · Post by **chris-stockton** » Fri Mar 15, 2013 9:36 am

ok, had a look at the clutch and it has helix autosportwritten on it.
Im wondering if it needs a heavy duty release bearing?

sidecar · Post by **sidecar** » Fri Mar 15, 2013 9:57 am

chris-stockton wrote:ok, had a look at the clutch and it has helix autosportwritten on it.
Im wondering if it needs a heavy duty release bearing?

I don't think that you will have any issues with the release bearing but the following may be of interest to you...

I replaced a standard Borg and Beck friction plate with a Helix one when the shock absorbing springs broken in the standard plate. I guess 300 BHP plus a 100 BHP NOS shot was a bit too much for the standard plate shock springs. (When I say standard plate, it was purchased from RPI along with the pressure plate, Chris at RPI gave me some 'spin' on it being TVR spec but I could not find out much about it other than it has a red blob of paint on the pressure plate. Des Hammill goes on about paint colours on the clutch but not red paint!)

Anyway the RPI setup never slipped but when I fitted the Helix friction plate it slipped very easily even without NOS. I spoke to them about it and they said that I should have used their pressure plate. This seems a bit of a cop-out to me as my old pressure plate was fine with my old friction plate. Anyway they reckoned that the torque limit for their organic friction plate and their pressure plate was still a bit marginal with my setup so in the end I fitted the Helix pressure plate AND a 3 or 4 puck ceramic friction plate (I can't rememeber how many 'pucks' it had!).
The whole proceedings cost me an arm and a leg but the clutch does not slip! (Its not too grabby either). I have a brand new friction Helix friction plate sitting on my shelf.

One thing that I will say is that the central boss on the Helix plate is about 10mm deeper than the Borg and Beck (AP) stuff with all of the extra depth being off set towards the gearbox. This gives a much better spline engaugement which is just as well because the standard stuff would have caused me issues when used with a JE bellhousing and T5 gerabox. I would have had only 10mm engaugement but using the Helix stuff and after getting the bellhousing machined it has given me 29mm of engaugement.

Actually with regards to the release bearing is yours plastic? If so it might be worth just squeezing up the prongs on the release arm so that the slipper pads are not a sloppy fit around the bearing. You can very gentally squeeze the arm in a vice. The reason for saying this is that when the setup as a lot of play in it the whole release bearing can spin on the shaft which causes the whole assembly to fall apart leaving you with no way of disengauging the clutch. (It could even happen with the all metal release bearings I guess). It happened to my mate!