Monday, June 8, 2009

Everything that I touch, starts to melt... like my clutch.

I started tearing down the engine today. I haven't gotten too far into it, just as far as removing the gearbox and looking at the clutch and pressure plate. If the rest of this engine has been put together with as much care and attention to detail as everything else has so far, it's going to be an adventure of epically bad proportions. The clutch was (barely) held on with 3 different length bolts. Most of them were finger tight. The teeth on the flywheel are about half way worn off and it looks like the flywheel was resurfaced with a die grinder equipped with a 36 grit pad. It's not even close to flat, you can see where it was only being touched in 2 places by the clutch. The clutch itself is the cheapest piece of crap I've ever seen. It looks like compressed cardboard. The bolts holding the bellhousing had no lock washers or even flat washers. Just bolt heads right up against the aluminum. I hope it wasn't a professional shop that did this work. Some doof in his garage I can forgive, sort of. But any shop that does work like this needs to not be in business.

This is what happens to a clutch...


...and a flywheel...


...when you let this guy work on your car.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'm now sure this project needs it's own blog. all things pug like are being lost in a pile of sprite.

TriumphRacer said...

Sorry. I'm a car enthusiast. I find most things automotive to be of interest. Especially European cars.

Pujo! will be back, this is just a little digression. If people really start clamoring for a new blog, I'll do it.