desperately seeking a clutch plate

volkenstein · 18 March 2019, 00:56

Speedster,
My decidedly second hand plate measures 7 mm overall. One face is worn more than the other. This particular one, someone jammed it into
a 1300 TP manual. 8mm - 8.50 overall (including slight spring seperation) is good. Mike (Bookwus - RIP), Lee(68Autobug) and I discovered this years ago when we were comparing clutch
plate thicknesses. We found that a plate barely wore from new.

My crap is still in boxes so I measured with an eyeball and ruler.

Let me know if you need much more precision - I will have to find the box with calipers etc.

HTH
Volkenstein

Speedsterautoshift · 18 March 2019, 01:45

Hi Volks

It having been removed Friday I have been able to measure it. The overall total uncompressed thickness of the relined clutch is 9.14 mm. The friction material is 3.2 mm each side, so maths tell me the plate minus friction material is 2.74 mm. Bearing in mind that this includes an air gap this is interesting in itself. Overall thickness is 8.3 mm compressed by a clamp. so the air gap is .84 mm, and metal thickness is 1.9 so I guess there is possibly some slight error here (clamp over-compressing the spring plates compared to what would happen on the car perhaps), as I expect the thin plates of metal that make up the two leaves are 1 mm each, which would make more sense.

So it has been sent off, or will be sent off by a mate who has a delivery franchise tomorrow. I have told the relining company to reduce the thickness of the friction material to 2.5 mm. This will get overall thickness down to 7.74 mm, which will leave it slightly thicker than your worn one but a fraction thinner than the 8 - 8.5 overall figure you mention. That could be OK, I think, but I'll ring them first thing tomorrow, before the box arrives, and tell them to aim for 8.0 mm overall. I think 2.6 may be a titchy bit better than 2.5 per side.

You'll see longer messages and a number of images if you go back to the technical forum where I have been posting lots as have others.

Interestingly, when it was first removed one side had worn and been contaminated but the other side seemed pristine. so similar to the one you have.

So thanks muchly for the effort, especially doing it in the middle of a house move. Heroic!

I know what you mean about trying to find stuff in boxes. House moving is a major pain, and you find stuff goes missing and then you find stuff you never even looked at since the last time you moved house. Don't know how often you move house where you live, but we tend to do it quite often and I have done it 6 times in fourteen years, over 2 marriages, not to mention furnishing our new place in France from scratch, in that case transporting everything the distance from the UK to south west France in a large trailer over a period of a few years.

Best of luck with it all and thanks again.
I'll keep you posted.

regards
John

Speedsterautoshift · 18 March 2019, 02:02

Hi Volkenstein,
It occurred to me, as it should have done to the reliners, that the less worn side would have been a good place to go to to determine the likely thickness of new linings, as, as you say, they tend not to wear much usually, and they are definitely lined to the same thickness on both sides, it is just that one side tends to wear more than the other.

I wish to God that the reliners had had the sense to do just that. would have saved a lot of time, trouble and expense, (we are dreading the bill for removing and replacing engine twice and gearbox once from our "special".)

All the Best

Speedster

Airhead · 20 November 2019, 08:42

Hi John

I know this topic is old but I have 2 clutch plates, both used but plenty of wear left on them, open to reasonable offers, based in South Yorkshire

Cheers

Steve

Speedsterautoshift · 20 November 2019, 11:25

Hi Airhead,

Thanks for your kind offer. The problem now is not one of getting a plate of the right thickness but of getting around the fact the garage just cannot seem to fit it. We had to move foreward with things as we were leaving to go to live in France for 6 months odd, as we normally do every year. So they told us they'd fixed it. We had to pay to get it out.

They haven't fixed it at all, there is an awful noise until revved a bit and it is impossible to change gear. I had to start it in gear, then drive it home in "second" (middle one of the three).

Barely made it home as they had also, without my agreement, had it "tuned" by an "expert on VWs" who didn't even get the engine warm. It suffers with the usual flatspot down to being twin Webers which although a pain can be got over in a manual car, but is dangerous in an Autoshift.

So it sits on our drive wrapped up until I can attend to it, but I have a kitchen install to finish and I have recently chipped a bone in my thumb. So this has cost us £1500, for more or less nothing.

See you on the forum, there is another thread all about the ins and out of this, can't remember where though.

Again thanks for the offer.

John

68autobug · 20 November 2019, 15:06

Hi,
I see You are back from France and the problem is still there.... The main problem with autosticks is that NO ONE knows how to repair one or even know how they work.... I wouldn't let any Mechanic touch My car as I built it, and I know how easy it is to damage components etc.... You may have to get a used plate and use that.... The Clutch plates do not wear much as they are nearly instantly In or Out..... and I know You have spent a lot of money already and your car should be ready to drive for many many kilometres now....
I just hope they haven't damaged anything else....

Best of Luck

Lee in Australia....

Speedsterautoshift · 21 November 2019, 00:46

I've got plans for "outside the box" ways of fixing the clutch.

but what annoys me the most is that the screeching sound that occurs at tickover and just a bit above, is likely to be either the thrust bearing or whatever it's called (forgotten) or another bearing someoen mentioned on another thread and I just KNOW that the gearbox and clutch are going to have to come off to fix it. And I am not sure U can do that on my own especially as I have no four post lift or anything. doing it in a speedster is a whole different ballgame to doing it in an ordianry VW Beetle.

volkenstein · 27 November 2019, 01:41

Speedster,
Not having come across a speedster replica - first thing is - can your engine come out without a four poster hoist? If it needs to - oh woe.

Regards
Volkenstein

Speedsterautoshift · 27 November 2019, 19:07

As I said in my last post, no I have no 4 or even 2 post lift.

I do have a mobile engine hoist and two engine hoists of the tradtitional variety.

Although I am used to taking conventional engines and gearboxes out and have done them working in an ordinary double or even single garage, I have never taken a VW beetle engine out.

Obviously I have read up on it and I do understand that it should be relatively easy as long as you know to basically support the engine from underneath then lift the rear of the body and chassis up in the air. Or lower the engine to the floor.
BUT being a Speedster, this isn't possible.

Only with a 4 post lift, two or three guys who can take the weight and a ton of fiddling, as this is what the garage had to do as one bolt threw them and they couldn't see how to undo it. The bolt was on the top connecting the gearbox to the engine, more or less, could have been to the torque converter but whatever it was they had to take the whole engine-gearbox assembly out in one. Then they discovered the "bolt" was in fact just slid in there, nothing to undo at all. They replaced it with a proper one.

From then on, they just put it the engine back in then the gearbox/torque converter assembly. If I have to take the box off, I will have to raise the whole car on ramps and axle stands, big ones like I use for my Land Rovers, and take it from there. But it is amazingly tight. Also, to separate the clutch from the box I think I have to drain the oil and fiddle about inside the box. Not really sure.

I have given some real thought to getting the clutch to release and I have come up with a couple of ways of doing this. It is obvious that the clutch plate is now the right thickness, or if not, can only be off by a couple of thou. So I am going to play with how the diaphragm can is mounted, to see if I can move it further away from the gearbox, this would automatically move the arm in the right direction. If I cannot do that, I could separate the mechanism, i.e. the bottle screw and the parts it screws to, and saw off a couple of mmm here and a couple of mm there to enable the arm to pull just that bit further to free the clutch off.

What is really annoying is knowing I could do that without having to even move the car from where it is parked, outside on the gravel drive. But to shut the squeal up, whatever it is, I am more or less sure I am going to have to get the box, clutch, etc off. And I cannot get either into the garage or even to the garage door as the garage is still full of stuff for the kitchen and utility room which I still have to finish, (I recently chipped a bone in my thumb and am not really supposed to do anything much in the DIY line for a few weeks). In front of the garage are 2 Land Rovers deliberately left there blocking it from intruders when we are in France. Now they are blocking me! Neither will be easy to start, one hasn't started for 2 years at least!.

I also don't know anyone with experience on Beetles except the garage that fitted it originally and he was difficult when we asked him to do the clutch change at the beginning of the year. He didn't want to do the job as it would have blocked up his lift for a week or so and he no longer does the sort of work he used to do. So we got an offer to do it from the other garage and when they got stuck they rang the specialist and he started off awkward with "that was my job" type remarks , which none of us could understand. Although in the end he did become very helpful, emailing then digarams that I didn't have.

So now we have the clutch-plate, and especially if I can get it to release properly, the specialist might be more willing to take it on again and get the job finished, but having already paid £1500 to have it ferked up by the non-specialists neither I, nor the wife, whose car it is, want to have to spend yet more money to get it sorted. She is more willing to throw money at it than I am but then that is more me being bliddy stubborn and hating to let any car get the better of me.

Plus I also have to tune it back to how it was when I took it to the garage. The bloke there thought it sounded awful so he employed, completely unknown to us, a tuning specialist who apparently works on Beetle specials all the time and does dragsters etc. But the bloke didn't realise that the rattly engine, when warm, makes a lovely noise so didn't need touching at all, and the "tuner" tuned it cold, so it started and ran fine until it got warm and then it became a death trap as the usual flat spot just off tickover, (twin Webers) came in with a vengeance. In a manual car there are solutions to it but in an Autostick it really is deathly trying to pull onto a roundabout with a dying engine.

So watch this space! Maybe after Xmas I'll be able to get back to it.
Have a lovely Christmas!
john

Airhead · 02 December 2019, 17:35

Hi Speedsterautoshift

Whereabouts are you in the UK

Airhead

Speedsterautoshift · 02 December 2019, 17:40

Ferndown, East Dorset.

John

volkenstein · 26 May 2020, 05:49

Speedster,
Locked down in France still?

Regards
Volkenstein

Speedsterautoshift · 27 May 2020, 23:26

I wish, no we didn't manage to get to France before the lockdown. Missed it by about 5 days, tickets bought and everything.
We'd be a lot safer over there.
In a pretty safe part of the UK but La Montagne Noire is even better. Plus France as a whole is better as we have a bunch of complete idiots running the country, hence we have more deaths per million population than any country in the world.
All we can do is hope for a trip over there before Brexit comes in to put the icicng on our sh!t cake!

Things OK with you?