Clutch failure in G50 3.2's

[89911]

I recently had a complete failure of my car's transmission. The good news is that is was the last run of the season and was scheduled to have the engine and transmission dropped and rebuilt. Taking apart the clutch tonight, the reason for the failure was frightfully obvious. The clutch had literally disintergrated. The dust was spewing out of it when removed along with larger chunks of burnt, hardened rubber. And to think I was at Mid-Ohio with this car in October. I realize my car is driven hard, but to look at this clutch, it would seem it was about 5000 mile overdue (I had about 70k on the speedo). I wounder how other stand on their clutches. If you are running an orginal clutch and it is over 50k, I would think you would want to ditch the exploding rubber centered factory one and get a spring loaded clutch ASAP!

[PeteBrown]

My '87 has its original clutch with about 68k mi on it. After my first Mid-Ohio event in July I began to hear a ticking noise from under the rear seats/transmission & clutch area. Discussions with various mechanics have concluded that my throw-out bearing is going as the noise will disappear if I put a slight bit of pressure on the clutch pedal without engaging the clutch. I plan to replace the clutch either this winter or early in the spring with a spring centered unit.

[toolman]

I just replaced mine as the engine was out for a rebuild. The spring center discs have a touchier feel to them. The rubber center discs also have to be compressed as you let the clutch out because there is some spring action between the two sides which gives you a gradual take off. The newer discs do not have this and are a little narrower as measured thickness.

[buttjoint]

Installed a springcenter clutch in my 89 street machine and haven't noticed much diffrence if any than the rubber. Works sweet.