The Project Pad

My car will be needing a clutch soon, and I'm really thinking about the SPEC stage 3. Does anyone have experience with SPEC's Audi products? How are they?

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southbend.

Clutches are a loaded subject.

I've been working in performance shops for seven years now, in three different shops. Between those three shops and another two or three I communicated regularly with, I know of two dozen complete failures of Southbend clutches, and three that destroyed transmissions in the process. The questionable one was the Mk5 that broke the PP straps and sawed the transmission in half...sure, Southbend might not be directly responsible for those. The six puck that welded one of the pucks to the pressure plate, then broke the B6 A4 input shaft when the guy went to shift at 7000rpm...pretty cut and dry. Their metallic clutches have some kind of major problem with welding and coming apart in chunks.

In the same period, I've put basically 100k miles on Spec Stage 3 and 3+ clutches in my personal I5 Audis. The first Stage 3 wore so long, that it wore the friction surfaced on my used LWFW down to the bolt heads. I replaced it with a 3+ which has been faultless and is superior in every way to the Stage 3. I've sold a dozen Stage 2 and 3 clutches in the past five years on daily driven modified cars, and have never received anything but praise. My only personal experience with one slipping was on a brand new clutch that I beat on. I broke it in per instructions for the next 750mi and it worked as designed since.

The only other clutches I would use aside from Spec are Clutchmasters, which I have less firsthand experience with but it has only been positive, and SRE which is where you should look if you don't want to screw around at all.

Many people seem to think differently of these experiences, but I've had to deal with the 'my Southbend clutch failed' headache a bunch of times and haven't with these other aftermarket companies.

Sam

FWIW I have and like my Spec Stg 3 quite a bit. Seems to be holding my 30r setup fine. No issues at all. BUT I didn't buy it.

I had a spec stage III in my jetta, it held up great, took it out with 30k and there was still plenty of meat on it. It held up to 300ftlb 2nd gear launchs and never slipped.

Clutchnet. You won't find a better price on any other clutch kit. I have been a very happy customer of theirs with my last two clutches.

i got my 7A SPEC stage 3 kit for $400 shipped
Thats a very reasonable I think

For what it's worth I bought a brand new Stage 2 Clutchnet for my 16v MK2. Within 3 weeks the clutch springs themselves exploded and destroyed everything, new lw flywheel was ruined, casing broke everything. It was a complete failure, and I did not receive a penny back from clutchnet, and I was out 600$ from the installation. At least I learned to do my own work after that.

This was back in 2009, and a different chasis, still the taste of paying 300 dollars for a clutch that did that remains.

themagellan wrote:At least I learned to do my own work after that.

If the clutch was defective how would this matter?

Well, it matters when you pay 500$ to someone to change an 020 transmission which s a very simple thing to take care of. It would have been another 500$ + OEM Clutch to get it moving again.

So rather than 1500$ total, I was able to eat the labor the 2nd time around and do it myself for 900~. When you pay for labor and a part is defective you eat both the part and labor since the mechanic isn't liable. I meant it more like "I learned how to save money"

Gotcha, to me it read as if the install was involved in the failure.

amd is the best wrote:Clutchnet. You won't find a better price on any other clutch kit. I have been a very happy customer of theirs with my last two clutches.

x2