Great to Hear the Bee's going Home!

Ugh.. me too. And as a little treat to the bee... new Challenge coilovers going on as well as that Seibon NS-style carbon fiber front lip! :woot:

So the failure of the Concentric Slave Cylinder (CSC) basically caused the Clutch Master Clyinder to give out and spill all the fluid then?

I guess that's the verdict.

So I got my car back with stock clutch back in place (which feels like there's nothing there ugh :icon14:) and the tech didn't put the damn failed CSC in the car. WTF? I got the aftermarket clutch back but he said he would give me the failed parts. I was looking forward to taking some pics for you guys and getting them into the hands of an aftermarket vendor but no dice.

I put a call in to get the CSC but he still hasn't returned my call yet. :shakes head:

:mad:

Tell me about it! I'm going to call and hound him tomorrow to get my hands on the part/s. I paid for them when I bought the car and I want them back.

well i had a second one lying around so i tore it the hell apart today and from what i can see it doesn't look good for the french. the csc is a metal can that snaps into a plastic base (tis a pain to get apart) either way that plastic base is really brittle and so is the plastic piston (yup this beeyotch puts hundreds of pounds of force on a small plastic ring that looks like small piece of prepreg nylon about a half inch long with a seal molded to one end). The bearing is snapped onto the plastic piston and held in place with a tiny metal ring. but the main thing i noticed is that i had only 9,000 miles on this thing and while it was still working when i took it out, after removing the metal sleeve from the base i found a film of clutch fluid all over the inside where it shouldn't be so my guess is it was seeping past the O-ring in the base.

The thing is injection molded so because some of the features are hard to machine it looks i'll have to make a few changes to it for the new one. I can't wait to put the clutch and flywheel back in.

Is this why clutch play gets worse over time? So far it's hovering around 1-2" instead of nothing when it was brand new.

from what i see the whole assembly is just plain bad and i don't have the slightest clue why the they would do this other than corporate resource sharing with renault and bureaucratic cost savings contracts with the valeo company (in france). after the problems with the hr engines you would figure they would do a redesign and throw the plastic POS out but no, they probably just upgraded the grade of pre-preg and called it a day. the other thing i noticed is that the csc has the fluid dampening restrictions built into it that is very likely the cause of many of the slipping clutches, and stuck disengagement problems as well i wish i could remember who it was that was at the track and his clutch got stuck to the floor cause this is for him. there is a tiny little oriface that actually feeds the fluid in and out of the piston. they make it supper small so that while clutch disengagement remains normal due to the high pressure as the clutch is engaging this tiny hole causes the clutch to slip due to slowing down the fluid as it returns to the master cylinder. on the street this means smoother engagement for novice drivers, on the track shifting quickly this means extremely elevated line pressure right where the stupid tiny O-ring between the steel sleeve and the plastic housing is causing more stress on the CSC during disengagement, and a stuck or burning clutch on the engagement.

This is a very common problem on 98+ gm vehicles with the ls v8's, documented in a few magazines but luckily for them their CSC is an aluminum piece not plastic, and GM put the restriction in the clutch line not in the actual part sou could just drill out the restriction with an 1/8th inch drill bit and you never had problems again until the bearing failed.

Good info thanks for the post +1

Bump, Can you post pics of this assembly?

Wow, $hitty clutches and $hitty brakes, wat else is $hitty?

The doors. I'm getting my Miata doors next week. :icon17:

Sport brakes aren't bad imo. At least I haven't had any problems with 'em.

well, the ice mode for brakes kinda sucks. So back to clutch, so when we change clutch, we will need an aftermarket full metal CSC? what else will cause problems?
man, someone needs to design an aftermarket csc lol

i've pretty much gotten the new design i'm going with hammered out now i need a bit of tooling and time as well as finding a good shop in the area that can soldier the steel sleeve from the stock piece into my new base so there will be no o ring to worry about. I'm also going to change out to regular IF fittings so i need to get an adapter line made, and a top bleed line for easy clutch bleeding. It'll take a bit and i probably won't be able to make many of them as this is a sidejob for me. I wish i could work for a company like stillen.

As for a picture of all the parts they are in my toolbox at work so i can't get to them until monday and right now i'm trying to find the 20mm nut for my oil cooler kit around my house somwhere as a family member moved it the last time she was over without caring that it is a very hard to find piece.