Crazy discoveries while replacing 124 clutch

jdennie · Post by **jdennie** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 12:31 pm

You guys are not going to believe this. A friend and I were replacing my clutch this week. The reason? It was stuck. Yes stuck. Kind of strange for a car that hasn't been sitting up too much right. Well . . . I bought the car over the summer. When it arrived from Arizona I drove it and noticed a little chatter, nothing terrible to worry about. Right? Well this week as we removed the old clutch we discovered that someone had installed the clutch plate backwards. Yes! I swear to God. I can't believe that it was working at all when I got it. Anyway, as we were installing the new one, I also noticed that there was no pilot bearing on the crankshaft. How drunk would someone have to be to do this kind of work?

ventura ace · Post by **ventura ace** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:14 pm

Strange! As I recall, it would be impossible to mount the clutch plate on my spider backwards (1438cc flywheel and clutch). If installed backwards, there would be interference (flywheel bolts, maybe??) that would prevent the clutch friction plate from contacting the flywheel surface. Or maybe it was the pilot bearing where the interference would be -- might explain why there was no pilot bearing!!

Who had the car before? Maybe they weren't aware of their mechanic's blunders.

alvon

spiderrey · Post by **spiderrey** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:01 pm

it never surprises me what other people do to thier car. when i bought my 68 spider, we removed the engine to rebuild it and all the flywheel bolts had groves in them from riding on the clutch. they were all ready to fall out.
my seventeen year old son tried to put a clutch in by himself. at his moms house. he got it together, i thought that was great since he had never really worked on a car himself. it didnt work right and it made a lot of noise. he left the pilot bearing out cause it was to hard to put in. the flywheel bolts were lose and rubbing on the clutch. it was kind of funny when we found this after mark took it apart to try and figure out what was wrong. although it didnt turn out right, im still proud of that boy for attepting to do it himself

So Cal Mark · Post by **So Cal Mark** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:10 pm

if the disc is installed backwards the disc hub contacts the flywheel bolts and clamps the disc so that it can't release

Jim DeShon · Post by **Jim DeShon** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 11:08 pm

A number of years ago, I bought a old Dodge truck. After a few months, the clutch failed. In desperation, I towed it home with my old trusty Volvo 122 Amazon. When I took out the transmission, I found the same thing. The center of the disk was concave because the hub had been force against the flywheel bolts. It was still working until the center broke out of the disk. It is unbelievable what some people put together. ...J.D.