It sounds like what happened to my 71BGT and neither applied. Nor was it
a DPO but rather all my doing. My 71BGT was very high mileage as I used
to drive it 100 miles a day commuting to work, almost all highway
driving. I replaced the TO bearing faithfully after an engine overhaul
and a couple of transmission repairs including replacing the tranny with
an OD unit. Where I failed was in not replacing the pressure plate.
After ten years and maybe 200k miles (hard to say, speedo was broke
during some of that time), I got the squealing sound indicating clutch
failure but it in itself was barely noticeable. A few months later, in a
drive to a job interview about 30 miles away, the clutch failed when the
slave cylinder popped open due to excessive play in the clutch. I
detailed this to the list at the time, maybe 10-15 years or thereabouts.
I didn't get the job either which I have to thank the car for, likely a
good thing in retrospect. Separating the engine and transmission, I was
able to see the TO bearing was worn all the way to the metal. Comparing
old to a new pressure plate showed what happened - the new had a thick
collar that the TO bearing presses against whereas the collar was gone
on the old one. What likely happened was that the collar eventually wore
down and once it disintegrated, the TO bearing's wear against the
pressure plate was accelerated greatly until it too failed. The moral of
the story is to replace all 3 units together - pressure plate, disc, and
TO bearing if anyone of the 3 needs replacing, not prohibitively
expensive.
But still, the answer to the original question is excessive wear -
components do wear out and taken too far will lead to destruction
whether due to riding the clutch or normal long term use. And certainly
there should have been wear sounds preceding the final destruction.
David Councill
64 B
67 BGT
72 B (powered by the 71BGT powertrain from above)
-----Original Message-----
From: mgs-bounces@autox.team.net [mailto:mgs-bounces@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Richard Ewald
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 5:07 PM
To: Mike Eldred
Cc: spridgets@autox.team.net; mgs@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Mgs] The tale of the crunchy clutch
Two things come to mind.
1. Not changing the TO bearing when the clutch was changed the last time
2. Leaving your foot on the clutch pedal when not actually shifting.
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 1:29 PM, Mike Eldred
<redscirocco@hotmail.com>wrote:
> is there any other known cause for that kind of clutch destruction?
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