Julio_Scorchio
Member
Well. A very interesting couple of days.
It started out with Julio's clutch slipping a bit under power. Made me think I needed a clutch which was surprising because he's only done around 40000 miles, . Apparently Adrian had a new clutch fitted at around 22000 miles because he didn't want any clutch slip with the increased power that the turbo conversion would give. There seems to be a school of thought that a Punto GT clutch will fit the Sporting, and so that was what Adrian asked the chap to fit.
When I bought Julio the clutch was a little strange, not seeming to disengage quite enough, yet possibly slipping a little bit - but difficult to tell. At Easter it became obvious it was slipping and so Brian and I decided that we would change it during May bank holiday week. So we started last Saturday.
When the gearbox came off, we looked at the clutch cover and were horrified by the state of the tines as they were so incredibly worn, some had even almost worn through, and some bits had obviously snapped off. (You can see from the picture, the wear rings should never be there, the tines should be flat and even all the way to the end.)
The driven plate was also very black and shiny, and had definitely seen better days.
Checking the Thrust bearing however revealed a strange phenomenon: the thrust bearing was off-centre, meaning it's bearing face had been 'scrubbing' the tines and wearing them drastically. You can see how much it's offset in the picture below.
So there was nothing for it but to buy a clutch kit. But when we looked, we couldn't find a PuntoGT clutch that fitted the flywheel, as it had a proprietry spacing for the clutch cover bolts. It seemed that the only straightforward replacement would be a standard Cinqy Sporting Clutch. So we bought one, and took it home.
The next day we looked at the thrust bearing, and discovered that it too, was off-centre. (Pic below)
. This did not fill us with glee. Thinking this must have been a manufacturing fault, we took it back to the supplier. The salesman then went through a few clutch kits trying to find one that was concentric, (none of them were), before I discovered you could actually 'click' the bearing sideways a bit and force it to go off-centre in every direction if you so wished. This made us think that with a bit of careful persuasion we should be able to centre it, and so with a bit of careful squeezing and pushing the bearing was perfectly centred. But it was difficult to do.
Now, has anyone at all experienced this themselves? It was a new discovery for me, Brian, John (the FIAT Parts Manager) and the bloke from Partco where we bought the clutch. I must say I am very surprised that the thrust bearings are supplied with an obvious offset, without any form of instruction to centralise the bearing. It was more really by luck than judgement that we discovered it. I can only assume that the thrust bearing is supposed to self-centre itself once fitted, but the bearing seemed to require too much force for that. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has replaced a clutch in a Cinq and seen the same thing. I would also be very interested to hear from anyone who has managed to fit a heavier duty clutch kit, either from a Punto or using an aftermarket clutch.
Now all I have to do is find out how well the standard Cinq item handles the power........
Tosh
**Men don't stop playing because they grow old; they grow old because they stop playing.**
It started out with Julio's clutch slipping a bit under power. Made me think I needed a clutch which was surprising because he's only done around 40000 miles, . Apparently Adrian had a new clutch fitted at around 22000 miles because he didn't want any clutch slip with the increased power that the turbo conversion would give. There seems to be a school of thought that a Punto GT clutch will fit the Sporting, and so that was what Adrian asked the chap to fit.
When I bought Julio the clutch was a little strange, not seeming to disengage quite enough, yet possibly slipping a little bit - but difficult to tell. At Easter it became obvious it was slipping and so Brian and I decided that we would change it during May bank holiday week. So we started last Saturday.
When the gearbox came off, we looked at the clutch cover and were horrified by the state of the tines as they were so incredibly worn, some had even almost worn through, and some bits had obviously snapped off. (You can see from the picture, the wear rings should never be there, the tines should be flat and even all the way to the end.)
Checking the Thrust bearing however revealed a strange phenomenon: the thrust bearing was off-centre, meaning it's bearing face had been 'scrubbing' the tines and wearing them drastically. You can see how much it's offset in the picture below.
So there was nothing for it but to buy a clutch kit. But when we looked, we couldn't find a PuntoGT clutch that fitted the flywheel, as it had a proprietry spacing for the clutch cover bolts. It seemed that the only straightforward replacement would be a standard Cinqy Sporting Clutch. So we bought one, and took it home.
The next day we looked at the thrust bearing, and discovered that it too, was off-centre. (Pic below)
Now, has anyone at all experienced this themselves? It was a new discovery for me, Brian, John (the FIAT Parts Manager) and the bloke from Partco where we bought the clutch. I must say I am very surprised that the thrust bearings are supplied with an obvious offset, without any form of instruction to centralise the bearing. It was more really by luck than judgement that we discovered it. I can only assume that the thrust bearing is supposed to self-centre itself once fitted, but the bearing seemed to require too much force for that. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has replaced a clutch in a Cinq and seen the same thing. I would also be very interested to hear from anyone who has managed to fit a heavier duty clutch kit, either from a Punto or using an aftermarket clutch.
Now all I have to do is find out how well the standard Cinq item handles the power........
Tosh
**Men don't stop playing because they grow old; they grow old because they stop playing.**
