Evolution>Sti

My MR has 337whp and 330tq. Its been launched roughly around 10 times. Since I'm taking it the drag strip more often now how long will they last? If anyone has experiences with their clutches braking after doing a launch please let me in on some info. Thanks.

kozmic27

That is pretty variable from car to car. If you launch it a lot, at elevated power, they won't last as long as mild use. Here is what to watch for in your situation so that when they DO wear out, they don't take out any other parts inside the gear box.

When clutches wear to a certain point, the amount of oil between the friction plates and the steels becomes reduced, and the steels overheat. Once they begin overheating they warp. This usually happens well before all of the friction material is worn off of the friction discs. Once the steels are warped, the clutches will have trouble becoming completely dis-engaged. This will cause odd number gear shifter fork malfunction DTC's, and issues with the car shifting between the even and odd gear sets. If you have a car with around 40k miles on it, or a car that gets launched a LOT, these will be good indications that your clutches are worn.

The shift fork engagement pawl is brass. What will happen if the car is used for a prolonged period with warped steels is that this brass pawl will wear down, or break off. Since this shift fork is inside the transmission, and NOT available from Mitsubishi/Getrag, you will want to make sure that you either replace your clutches, or at the least, remove them and inspect them if you start encountering any of the issues I mention above.

The even and odd clutches have the same amount of friction material on them. For this reason, since the odd set is the one that gets the car moving every single time it stops, the odd set almost ALWAYS wears out first.

jlldetroit

iTrader: (5)

Kozmic, is the clutch job fairly involved? Say would someone at home be able to do it with a diy or is it best to leave it to a sst specialist?

tellme718

iTrader: (2)

So by upgrading the clutch packs you can almost prevent most sst issues people experience?

kozmic27

That depends entirely on the experience level of the do it your self person. I have seen a LOT of clutch baskets get jacked up by professional shops. It is not complicated, but it DOES have to be done correctly without damaging any of the machine sealing surfaces etc. If it isn't set up correctly, it won't work correctly. We only charge $240 plus shipping to build up a clutch basket, and you don't need to ship the entire transmission.


Not necessarily, no. Knowing when things start to get worn and replacing them before they wreck expensive internal parts will prevent a lot expense though. I had an 80k mile SST in here today that had never had a service. We did a full service on it, tuned it, and it performed flawlessly at 300lb/ft on our dyno with no slipping (after very mild transmission tuning). I have seen other cars with 10k miles on them slip like mad and require aggressive re-mapping of the transmission tables to get them to work right. Why one car can last seemingly forever with almost no maintenance and why another car with low miles and proper maintenance will fail so pre-mature is honestly one of the things in life that makes me just shake my head and wonder wtf.