solid flywheel clutch failure?

[glenandemm]

hi guys last night i had to be towed home by the rac,very embarassing being towed by a swb transit when your in a long wheel base
anyway i lost all drive and suspected clutch,got up this morning and ripped the gearbox out and found the middle of the friction disc in pieces and the springs looking all skewiff!
i'd only put a solid flywheel and clutch in it last year?
the pressure plate,flywheel and release bearing all seem ok but do you think its just a failure of the clutch or could something else have caused this like too much weight in my bus carrying 14 people etc

[winterheating]

well thats the whole point of DMF isnt it a clutch plate on its own isnt enough to take the torque and weight

how long did the clutch last previous to this one

[glenandemm]

how did cars and vans do before dmf's came along and they had solid flywheels,what do mk5's have?
ive known a few peeps with solid conversions and not had any probs suppose mine might just be a faulty clutch

[Vee4]

how did cars and vans do before dmf's came along and they had solid flywheels,what do mk5's have?

My Mk5 does very nicely. Traditional clutch and flywheel architecture - replaced clutch at 100,000 miles because the gearbox had to come off anyway, replacement still good after another 170,000 miles. Never had clutch problems with the previous Transits either.

I seem to remember someone saying that the DMF came about because the new TDCI engines have pick up like a race car, and the DMF would cushion the drive take up as the clutch started to bite.

[winterheating]

i didnt think DMFs were a new thing

the mk5 has the clutch built for the job,
the mk6 has the clutch and flywheel built for the job
but the point im making is the ''solid conversion'' was not the ctutch and flywheel built for the job/.

but yeah your prob right just dodgy clutch by the sound of whats happend to it

[Vee4]

Still learning stuff every day, and trying to prepare myself for Mk7 ownership! I didn't know about the DMF until I started reading the fine print in the spec's for the Mk7. One of the references suggests that they have been around for 20 years or so. Here are some links outlining the need for the DMF, and how it works:

http://moodle.student.cnwl.ac.uk/moodle ... heels.html

http://www.schaeffler.com/remotemedien/ ... _de_en.pdf
(Check page 20 of this reference regarding the effects of 'chip tuning')

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnaXB8q3uzQ

In summary, the DMF is intended to reduce transmission to the gearbox of short-term variations in torque on the crankshaft of the engine as it rotates. The race car analogy is appropriate to some extent, because of the reduced mass of moving parts in the engine, high compression ratios, etc. Now I know what it's for and how it works, I feel happier about owning one, and I have some idea how get the best service life.

As winterheating says, the clutch is part of the overall design.

[glenandemm]

well managed to get a replacement clutch ordered today from a place called the transit parts centre in london,anyone heard of them?,no one else wanted to separate a clutch kit from the flywheel,suppose they'd be stuck with a solid flywheel?
supposed to be next day delivery so hopefully i'll have the beast back on the road making me money tomorrow,in the mean time im borrowing my stepdads mk7 17 seater 140 ps model,seems to have a lot of turbo lag then just boosts right on,dont really like it,the dash doesnt do it for me,i love the setout of the mk6 although i do like how many gloveboxes its got ,does anyone put gloves in a glovebox anymore

[godsworkshop]

[quote="glenandemm"]well managed to get a replacement clutch ordered today from a place called the transit parts centre in london,anyone heard of them?,no one else wanted to separate a clutch kit from the flywheel,suppose they'd be stuck with a solid flywheel?
supposed to be next day delivery so hopefully i'll have the beast back on the road making me money tomorrow,

I've used Transit Parts a few times and would recommend them, delivery was good & have also collected from them.

[glenandemm]

cool cheers mate,just gotta wait in for it to be delivered today then hopefully i can have it back in tonight and running,one thing i did find while taking the box out was when i removed the gearstick assembly i found the pinch bolt on the back of the gearbox selector rod very loose ,tightened it up so it should feel nice and tight now,just thinking while the bus is off the road these last few days i should have sent my ecu off to vantuner for a remap but hindsights a wonderful thing,too be honest though im dying to get rid of the bus as i really need a jumbo 17 seater for work reasons but moneys tight at the mo