Lightened Flywheel and New Life
Omer F. Khan
ohmfab at comcast.net
Tue Jul 21 11:47:39 CDT 2009
Hello all,
Since my '92 Classic has been downgraded to merely being a daily driver
I haven't really paid much extra attention to it other than routine oil
changes and cursing at it when something breaks. About a month ago I
started cursing again when the car ate it's fourth clutch disk in four
years. The hub breaks and then the spring flies out into the pressure
plate and jars the whole thing up. Apparently auto crossing every
weekend is easier on the clutch than daily driving in Atlanta traffic.
Two positives come from routing broken clutches. 1) I can remove the
transmission in under 45 minutes including the time to park the car and
get it up on the stands. 2) I can drive pretty good without using the
clutch. I once drove from Raleigh, NC to Atlanta with a broken clutch.
It was fun. I keep a paperclip in the car now to bypass the clutch switch.
The latest plate that broke was a B15 unit which I thought would be
better than a Sachs or replacement Exedy like I had used in the past.
This time I found a local clutch shop that built me a great looking
extra beefy disk with a sprung hub for a very reasonable price. He also
happened to have a used Fidanza flywheel laying around which he let me
have ridiculously cheap because the guy he originally sold it to hated
it because of how hard the car was to drive around. It is an 8.5 lb unit
(checked it on a scale myself).
Undeterred, I threw it in with the new clutch setup and have managed to
put almost a hundred miles on it. All I can say is that the 10 lbs that
I lost on the flywheel feels like 200 pounds off the weight of the car.
AMAZING DIFFERENCE! It really feels like a completely different car.
I've been stuck in stop and go traffic almost every day the last week
and other than a very slight chatter on takeoff and having to give it an
extra 300 rpm I really can't tell the difference as far as drivability.
It is pretty easy to live with. The biggest difference I have noticed
is that the car definitely accelerates faster above 4k RPM and that it
is a bit faster going up hills. I'm enjoying the car so much now that I
can't keep my foot out of it and I no longer care what gas mileage it gets.
The moral of my ever so long-winded story is that if you are bored with
your old classic, don't despair, buy it some mods! Or at least give it a
wash...1 lb of dirt is like 0.01 hp you know.
Now for a question, what was the last performance mod you guys bought
for your Classic (or NX) and when?
Omer
'92 White SE-R
'99 Volvo S80
'93 Range Rover Classic
http://www.ohmfab.com
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