There was no defined release point and you have to press the pedal for a huge way when you want to change a gear while standstill.
OK - a winter job.
I removed the engine + gearbox from the car and unmounted the gearbox from the engine. The flywheel, pressure plate and drive plate looks like this:
The flywheel has an uneven surface at the friction area and a lot of overheating cracks. The teeths of the starter sprocket looks worse. It is already weight reduced to 11kg and balanced after that.
The pressure plate is a original Borg Warner part and looks the same the opposit side at the flywheel. Bad. The diaphragm spring is very soft. The diaphragm spring has curved ends and at the release bearing is a round one as well, it will work, but theses two ends together are not recommended.
The drive plate is vitrified and below the min. thinkness.
The pressure plate and the drive plate have to be renewed while the flywheel can be reworked.
Lets start with the flywheel.
Skim 1mm on the late to remove the uneven surface and reduce some more weight. The over heated friction area is still unven as it was hardend by the heat and the late can not deal with different surface hardness. But it looks better than before...
I ask a friend for plane grinding the surface. He gave me the tip first to exchagne the starter ring gear, cause the schrinking of the ring will push / press the flywheel in another shape as without ring. We talk about 3/10 of a mm from the inner side to the outer side here.
So renew the ring. The old is off and the new is shrinked to the flywheel. Put the ring gear in the oven for 1h at 170°C and the flywheel in the fridge. Easy job.
To fix it even better I welded the ring gear to the flywheel. It didn´t weld well as one side is cast iron, the other steel.
Then plan grinded it. What a surface...
The flywheel is ready for balancing now. This can only be done by an specialist. I will bring it to our lokal shop who does this...
A new clutch is needed. The best would be a AP Racing CP2000-13 for the Rover V8 - but they want to have around 400-500€ for this. Uff.
I bought a cheap bargin on ebay where they offer a 50% uprated pressure plate + a 50% uprated driven plate and a releae bearing for 160€.
Sounds good and I knew, that you get what you pay for... so I wait in suspense what I will get...
Compared with the original B&W one:
Look at the rivets and the recesses for the torrison springs...
Over Facebook I get contact to Clutchfix Ltd. in UK. Ben Willimas, sale at Clutchfix gave me a hand and offered me a speciale uprated three piece clutch for up to 500Nm. It hase a double diaphragm spring and their HD1 organic friction material, burst tested to 250 °C on the driven plate. For around 350€ it is a well sorted price.
I only bought the drive plate from Clutchfix Ltd.
See here a compare of them:
