crew219
Banned
SB Clutch review:
I’ll preface this review by saying that I’ve had the clutch replaced 3x in 7 months and 5k miles so you can guess what kind of review this will be.
I purchased a Southbend Stage II daily w/ cryo kit from a friend/dealer back in April of 2011. I installed the kit in May of 2011. No issues, the clutch felt great and the noise from the non-silent disk was not unbearable. Flash forward to December of 2011, 5200 mi later, the clutch won’t disengage after driving 55mph on a 5 mile straight road. I pulled it over and limped it home after pumping the clutch and shutting the engine off and managing to start it in gear. Removal of the original unit showed that one of the six clutch hub springs had popped out, forcing itself between the disk and the fingers of the pressure plate, preventing the disk from disengaging from the flywheel.
Obviously I was very concerned as to why this occurred so I spoke with a few sources in the industry and southbend. The official response I received from Andy@Southbend was that the failure was due to an “axial misalignment” between the transmission input shaft and the center point of the crank. When I pointed out that the transmission can only mate in one way (alignment dowels), he merely stated that sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
Since I was hesitant to put in another non-silent disk after having mine fail at an early age & reading about multiple other failures of the same disk (with the same excuse given), I asked if I could upgrade my kit to the newer silent disk which appeared to have more robust springs and certain design differences which led me to believe that it would be better. I called up SB and Jon handled the warranty exchange and $100 upgrade to the silent disk. During the phone call, I voiced a few concerns I had about the silent disk (issues with it not releasing or engaging off the floor as mentioned to me by a distributor) and he allayed my fears by explaining that they were isolated incidents many months ago (October IIRC). Certain that there would be no issues, the silent disk was ordered.
Prior to receiving it, I also sent another email to Jon about certain differences between the silent and non-silent flywheel and a possible clearance issue, and he yet again addressed my concerns by stating that prior to shipping the disk, he mated it up to the same kit I had on my car to check and everything would work fine.
I received the disk and installed it. After multiple power bleeds using the correct procedure, the clutch would engage directly off the floor, the exact symptom I was warned of by the nameless SB distributor. I contacted SB and they stated that I could return the entire kit and have it inspected. Since I was already without a car for a few weeks, I opted to drive a week on it and see if it would improve. The pedal did move off the floor by 1cm, but between shifts, I could still feel the disk dragging on the flywheel. After 150 miles, I pulled the clutch disk off and found pretty much what I had assumed all along.
The disk is too thick. I had sent emails to Jon about it, and he said that it was impossible that it would be too thick as they use the same thickness linings for all their clutches. A too-thick disk explains all the symptoms of the low engagement and the disk dragging between shifts. While the linings themselves weren’t thicker, the marcel springs between the linings were of a thicker different design and caused the disk to be functionally 1mm thicker. I measured three disks, a new stock disk, southbend non-silent with 5k, southbend silent with 150mi. They measured 8mm, 7.8mm & ~9mm. In the following photo, you can see scorching on the clutch disk face where it meets the flywheel where it was dragging. The scorched areas are where the marcels mount and press the most on the lining.
When I presented Jon with the information, the only response I received was to return the kit for a refund. I did as asked and am getting refunded for my kit, although I am getting a good bit less than what I paid & had invested into it. More on that later.
I installed a brand new stock flywheel & clutch kit and the car is running great. The car is quiet and smooth again, and I have no worries of the clutch going bad like the two southbend units. Shifts are very quick and easy. The only downside is that I get slight judder from the DMF when going on and off power. Since I have an FSI, the clutch isn’t as likely to slip as the TSI. In fact, I know of several BT owners running the stock FSI clutch without issue or slipping. Keep in mind that they are not drag racing their cars, but several of them do track their vehicles without issues.
So why did the first clutch disk fail?
The reason the first disk failed is because it didn’t have a floating spline carrier. It had nothing to do with install, the disk simply shouldn’t be spec’d for this application. Unlike most manual transmissions, the VW O2Q (and also applies to O2M) does not utilize a pilot bearing in the crankshaft. This allows the crankshaft and transmission input shaft to be independent of each other, providing opportunity for “axial misalignment”. The alignment comes from the dowels that mate into the transmission, but even then, a few thousands of an inch off, and you can easily get some resonance in the clutch disk assembly that cannot be properly absorbed by the SB non-silent disk. As a result, the springs rub against the clutch hub assembly and eventually they either break or pop out. Just look at the OEM clutch disk 2, the spline center floats within the clutch hub. The SB silent disk 2 also incorporates the same feature and Jon even mentioned that with the silent disk, I wouldn’t suffer from the same failure as the non-silent disk 2 (implying a worse design in the non-silent disk).
Would I recommend the silent design?
Yes, because it (at least mine) was a sachs OEM clutch hub for another audi application and is well designed for its intended purpose. The oversized springs damped idle chatter well. I only heard a bit of noise under heavy A/C use, but even then, it was significantly quieter than the non-silent disk. There is still a good amount of gear noise with the silent disk, but that’s to be expected with any SMF setup. With the silent setup, I tested it with & without the fluidampr and did indeed see a reduction in gear noise with the fluidampr on. Provided that they fix the issue with the marcel springs, it should be a decent setup.
What about the excuses / suggestions SB has offered?
As I mentioned before, the majority of their excuses / “solutions” are meant to shift the blame away from them and turn it onto the end user. I earlier mentioned the “axial misalignment” excuse and explained how it is not valid. Another one they like to bring up is “firewall stiffness” and how on “older vehicles” the firewall where the master cylinder mounts will flex due to the increased pressure on the master cylinder required by the stiffer pressure plate. As I had zero problems with the exact same pressure plate on the non-silent disk, you can deduct that the firewall stiffness theory is bogus.
One of the more interesting comments by Jon is that:
A “bent disk” is also another excuse that they propagate. While I can see the possibility of slight warpage, it also seems highly unlikely given how easy the transmission is to mate. Once the transmission is pushed onto the dowels, the input shaft is no longer putting weight on the disk (unless the disk wasn’t centered properly in the PP/FW assembly). FWIW, the clutch alignment tool that SB provides does not work. The tip is way too small to fit into the crank properly. ECS sells a great replica of the factory alignment tool and I highly recommend purchasing it.
The most recent solution I’ve seen them push is the “SS clutch line”. Incidentally they were selling clutches that had no issues before USP / Techna-Fit sold a SS clutch line for our cars. As I’ve owned many vehicles that I’ve put SS lines on, I can tell you that there is very little difference in feel. 99% of what people feel is the effects of a fresh bleed. All the rubber lines are braided inside for stiffness and there is very little functional difference between the two.
Would I recommend Southbend?
Probably not. The only advantage they have is that they’re the only name in the game. No one else offers a clutch with that silent hub, once others do, I would probably look elsewhere. Not necessarily because they offer a bad product (everyone pretty much sources the same clutch disks, linings, sachs PP & flywheel from similar places) but because the customer support is not there. In my situation, I feel as if they did the absolute bare minimum. The suggestions I received from them were essentially blaming all the issues on me or the install while not even considering an issue on their end. (more on this later) Since I had known about a few of these issues prior to even purchasing the silent disk, I knew that he was simply finding ways to blame the issue on me or to state that it was “normal”. Honestly, what kind of company hears negative feedback about a kit back in October / November from a few of their distributors but continues to sell the faulty parts well into January? Ridiculous.
In the end, while I did receive a refund, it was less than what I put into it. I was not reimbursed for shipping costs to & from which was a bit over $100, and I was only reimbursed the dealer cost of the item, not what I paid. I’m not upset at the fact that I’m getting dealer cost as they were pretty understanding of the fact that my dealer no longer exists in the same capacity as from when I purchased the kit. As with almost any aftermarket company, they’ll pretty much never cover labor, so that was could expected. I had merely hoped that he would be a bit more generous in his refund, considering I had 3 clutch jobs in 7 months and 5k miles when there should have only been one clutch job to begin with. There was really no attempt to make me whole, or anywhere close to it. The casual attitude to customer service & integrity in acknowledging design flaws is exactly why I would be hesitant to recommend south bend to anyone.
Be happy if you have a great silent kit. You’ve benefited from all the people who didn’t have good kits. If I had a slipping TSI clutch, I’d probably just pick up their stage 3 disk as it seems the least likely to fail.
Dave
I’ll preface this review by saying that I’ve had the clutch replaced 3x in 7 months and 5k miles so you can guess what kind of review this will be.
I purchased a Southbend Stage II daily w/ cryo kit from a friend/dealer back in April of 2011. I installed the kit in May of 2011. No issues, the clutch felt great and the noise from the non-silent disk was not unbearable. Flash forward to December of 2011, 5200 mi later, the clutch won’t disengage after driving 55mph on a 5 mile straight road. I pulled it over and limped it home after pumping the clutch and shutting the engine off and managing to start it in gear. Removal of the original unit showed that one of the six clutch hub springs had popped out, forcing itself between the disk and the fingers of the pressure plate, preventing the disk from disengaging from the flywheel.
Obviously I was very concerned as to why this occurred so I spoke with a few sources in the industry and southbend. The official response I received from Andy@Southbend was that the failure was due to an “axial misalignment” between the transmission input shaft and the center point of the crank. When I pointed out that the transmission can only mate in one way (alignment dowels), he merely stated that sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
Since I was hesitant to put in another non-silent disk after having mine fail at an early age & reading about multiple other failures of the same disk (with the same excuse given), I asked if I could upgrade my kit to the newer silent disk which appeared to have more robust springs and certain design differences which led me to believe that it would be better. I called up SB and Jon handled the warranty exchange and $100 upgrade to the silent disk. During the phone call, I voiced a few concerns I had about the silent disk (issues with it not releasing or engaging off the floor as mentioned to me by a distributor) and he allayed my fears by explaining that they were isolated incidents many months ago (October IIRC). Certain that there would be no issues, the silent disk was ordered.
Prior to receiving it, I also sent another email to Jon about certain differences between the silent and non-silent flywheel and a possible clearance issue, and he yet again addressed my concerns by stating that prior to shipping the disk, he mated it up to the same kit I had on my car to check and everything would work fine.
I received the disk and installed it. After multiple power bleeds using the correct procedure, the clutch would engage directly off the floor, the exact symptom I was warned of by the nameless SB distributor. I contacted SB and they stated that I could return the entire kit and have it inspected. Since I was already without a car for a few weeks, I opted to drive a week on it and see if it would improve. The pedal did move off the floor by 1cm, but between shifts, I could still feel the disk dragging on the flywheel. After 150 miles, I pulled the clutch disk off and found pretty much what I had assumed all along.
The disk is too thick. I had sent emails to Jon about it, and he said that it was impossible that it would be too thick as they use the same thickness linings for all their clutches. A too-thick disk explains all the symptoms of the low engagement and the disk dragging between shifts. While the linings themselves weren’t thicker, the marcel springs between the linings were of a thicker different design and caused the disk to be functionally 1mm thicker. I measured three disks, a new stock disk, southbend non-silent with 5k, southbend silent with 150mi. They measured 8mm, 7.8mm & ~9mm. In the following photo, you can see scorching on the clutch disk face where it meets the flywheel where it was dragging. The scorched areas are where the marcels mount and press the most on the lining.
When I presented Jon with the information, the only response I received was to return the kit for a refund. I did as asked and am getting refunded for my kit, although I am getting a good bit less than what I paid & had invested into it. More on that later.
I installed a brand new stock flywheel & clutch kit and the car is running great. The car is quiet and smooth again, and I have no worries of the clutch going bad like the two southbend units. Shifts are very quick and easy. The only downside is that I get slight judder from the DMF when going on and off power. Since I have an FSI, the clutch isn’t as likely to slip as the TSI. In fact, I know of several BT owners running the stock FSI clutch without issue or slipping. Keep in mind that they are not drag racing their cars, but several of them do track their vehicles without issues.
So why did the first clutch disk fail?
The reason the first disk failed is because it didn’t have a floating spline carrier. It had nothing to do with install, the disk simply shouldn’t be spec’d for this application. Unlike most manual transmissions, the VW O2Q (and also applies to O2M) does not utilize a pilot bearing in the crankshaft. This allows the crankshaft and transmission input shaft to be independent of each other, providing opportunity for “axial misalignment”. The alignment comes from the dowels that mate into the transmission, but even then, a few thousands of an inch off, and you can easily get some resonance in the clutch disk assembly that cannot be properly absorbed by the SB non-silent disk. As a result, the springs rub against the clutch hub assembly and eventually they either break or pop out. Just look at the OEM clutch disk 2, the spline center floats within the clutch hub. The SB silent disk 2 also incorporates the same feature and Jon even mentioned that with the silent disk, I wouldn’t suffer from the same failure as the non-silent disk 2 (implying a worse design in the non-silent disk).
Would I recommend the silent design?
Yes, because it (at least mine) was a sachs OEM clutch hub for another audi application and is well designed for its intended purpose. The oversized springs damped idle chatter well. I only heard a bit of noise under heavy A/C use, but even then, it was significantly quieter than the non-silent disk. There is still a good amount of gear noise with the silent disk, but that’s to be expected with any SMF setup. With the silent setup, I tested it with & without the fluidampr and did indeed see a reduction in gear noise with the fluidampr on. Provided that they fix the issue with the marcel springs, it should be a decent setup.
What about the excuses / suggestions SB has offered?
As I mentioned before, the majority of their excuses / “solutions” are meant to shift the blame away from them and turn it onto the end user. I earlier mentioned the “axial misalignment” excuse and explained how it is not valid. Another one they like to bring up is “firewall stiffness” and how on “older vehicles” the firewall where the master cylinder mounts will flex due to the increased pressure on the master cylinder required by the stiffer pressure plate. As I had zero problems with the exact same pressure plate on the non-silent disk, you can deduct that the firewall stiffness theory is bogus.
One of the more interesting comments by Jon is that:
1mm of wear is typically the lifespan of a clutch disk. A sachs article I found indicated that the wear limit of a 8mm clutch is when it reaches 6.8mm in thickness. Essentially he’s saying that once you get it to wear down from 9mm to 8mm, then it will disengage normally! Never mind the fact that the more you allow the disk to drag on the flywheel between shifts, you're placing more stress on the synchros and are setting yourself up for early synchronizer failure.kthor703 said:
A “bent disk” is also another excuse that they propagate. While I can see the possibility of slight warpage, it also seems highly unlikely given how easy the transmission is to mate. Once the transmission is pushed onto the dowels, the input shaft is no longer putting weight on the disk (unless the disk wasn’t centered properly in the PP/FW assembly). FWIW, the clutch alignment tool that SB provides does not work. The tip is way too small to fit into the crank properly. ECS sells a great replica of the factory alignment tool and I highly recommend purchasing it.
The most recent solution I’ve seen them push is the “SS clutch line”. Incidentally they were selling clutches that had no issues before USP / Techna-Fit sold a SS clutch line for our cars. As I’ve owned many vehicles that I’ve put SS lines on, I can tell you that there is very little difference in feel. 99% of what people feel is the effects of a fresh bleed. All the rubber lines are braided inside for stiffness and there is very little functional difference between the two.
Would I recommend Southbend?
Probably not. The only advantage they have is that they’re the only name in the game. No one else offers a clutch with that silent hub, once others do, I would probably look elsewhere. Not necessarily because they offer a bad product (everyone pretty much sources the same clutch disks, linings, sachs PP & flywheel from similar places) but because the customer support is not there. In my situation, I feel as if they did the absolute bare minimum. The suggestions I received from them were essentially blaming all the issues on me or the install while not even considering an issue on their end. (more on this later) Since I had known about a few of these issues prior to even purchasing the silent disk, I knew that he was simply finding ways to blame the issue on me or to state that it was “normal”. Honestly, what kind of company hears negative feedback about a kit back in October / November from a few of their distributors but continues to sell the faulty parts well into January? Ridiculous.
In the end, while I did receive a refund, it was less than what I put into it. I was not reimbursed for shipping costs to & from which was a bit over $100, and I was only reimbursed the dealer cost of the item, not what I paid. I’m not upset at the fact that I’m getting dealer cost as they were pretty understanding of the fact that my dealer no longer exists in the same capacity as from when I purchased the kit. As with almost any aftermarket company, they’ll pretty much never cover labor, so that was could expected. I had merely hoped that he would be a bit more generous in his refund, considering I had 3 clutch jobs in 7 months and 5k miles when there should have only been one clutch job to begin with. There was really no attempt to make me whole, or anywhere close to it. The casual attitude to customer service & integrity in acknowledging design flaws is exactly why I would be hesitant to recommend south bend to anyone.
Be happy if you have a great silent kit. You’ve benefited from all the people who didn’t have good kits. If I had a slipping TSI clutch, I’d probably just pick up their stage 3 disk as it seems the least likely to fail.
Dave
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