Recently Nathan Darby and yours truly went on a Sunday morning drive only to have my clutch fail. We towed the car back and have removed the clutch and are now at a bit of a standstill. We need to know which parts we will or won't need. I'll post pictures. Disclaimer...we are better suited at work involving mouths and knee caps, so bear with us and thanks for the help! Also there was a lot of fluid loss at the bottom of the clutch housing when it went out. Image Unavailable, Please Login
If you did not know what to do you would have towed it to the shop and tech would replace clutch for $XXXX. If you have some tech skills but not as much as you would like you would buy a new clutch pack/flywheel/TO bearing and replace it with the old ones. $less bucks If you have more skills you read the WSM and it has specs for the flywheel like the accepted dish and surface roughness etc. Same for pressure plate and same for the clutch disc. Then specs for the set-up height to confirm the remanufactured pack will work and the stuff like a lazy guy didn't resurface your plate too thick. Flywheel grease some bearings. Then its a Hill TO bearing and clutch bleeding. $least bucks
How many miles are on the disk? Liquid in the bellhousing usually means you have a worn out rear main seal or faulty slave cylinder. Not sure if this applies to Ferrari's, though? You'll definitely need a new disk and need to have that flywheel turned. If you're cheap, hit it with a 80 grit orbital sander.
First things first. When your clutch failed, did your pedal drop to the floor, or was the engine reving and the car not moving, but the pedal felt ok.. The photo with the space between the 2 ends of the seal is normal btw.
The leak is seals on the splined shaft in the picture. Those things are lame. Pull the shaft out about 5 inches they become apparent.
The pedal dropped to the floor, but the car was just shifted into 3rd gear. Was getting on it pretty good. Very strange feeling and quick sequence of events. There is 40k miles on this clutch.
So, you don't know anything about Ferrari's much less the peculiarities of the 355 yet you give advice?
Looks like the failure was the slave cylinder giving up its fluid, so the clutch would no longer disengage. So the clutch still has some "go" left in it. It just ran out of no-go. While it's out, I agree that it makes sense to do the clutch as well.
Let me try to be more detailed, sorry for the confusion. This was a sudden loss of large amounts of clutch fluid from the pumpkin area. Clutch was fine and then suddenly went to the floor. Brake pressure warning light is now on. So I assumed a problem with the slave cylinder. Upon removing it, we did not see a large crack or rupture like I have seen in some of the other threads where these have failed. Also do not see obviously bad seals in the TO bearing assembly. We did see one large black chunk of some seal (pictured above), but did not see an obvious donor site where this came from. Nathan has some more detailed questions he's going to be posting shortly, concerning checking the condition of the pressure plate and flywheel, among others. Thanks again guys.
By the time the grooves in the disc are gone at the outer edge it is well past the wear limit. Also indicates the flywheel is bowl shaped which is the norm anyway so all those not suggesting disassembling the flywheel so it can be resurfaced have just failed.
Brake fluid level warning light is now on. The throw out bearing housings rupture and do that. The throw out bearing sleeves rupture and do that The throw out bearing seals rupture and do that
Looks like the green seal in the photo above (post #3) has a pretty good gap in it. Having not taken the clutch out of a 355 before, I'm not even sure what part we're looking at there, but that sure looks like something that would leak badly.
OK, you have clearly identified it was clutch fluid leak. For ref, there are 2 other fluids it could have been, Gearbox oil or liquid grease from inside the voith or dual mass system under the flywheel. It goes liquid from age and heat and can leak out. If you were unsure which an easy test is brake fluid mixes with water, oil doesn't. anyway to sort your problem you need to find where the leak was from, is it just the seals, these can be bought separately and replaced. or a bad bearing, and a decision can be made to upgrade to a hill bearing as suggested. although these only come in the newer larger size and a hill replacement mount would need to be added to that cost if you have the smaller. that starts to add up. Your decisions, all fairly easy to do. then look at the flywheel, check the dish. if it is significant it need resurfacing. by significant I mean anything over 0.3mm it can be ground up to 08 - 1mm max. It is not easy to get off the voith system. You need to remove top bearing shown in your picture, to get at a snap ring underneath. Remove the bolts and pull it off. you can then get at rear bearing. when it is ground make sure that can go up to the edge, some machines cant and leaving a step there is fatal. That could be finished off on a lathe. and then get it rebalanced. fit with new bearings snap rings and sorted. Whilst under there check there are no sings of grease escape. you could look deeper by removing it from the pumpkin but that needs the special ring nut tool and large breaker gun. once off there are a couple of allen key bolts in rear that can be undone to look at grease condition underneath. If it did need redoing ricambi sells the grease and o ring kits. Moving onto the clutch, the contamination in the organic material needs the friction plate to be replaced. whatever its thickness. Check the surface on the pressure plate, it looks cooked. if flat and all else looks well use that again. if dished get a new one. they can be reconditioned. hope that helps pm if you need more.
PS. no idea what that part is you have found, may not be from inside at all. What material is it made from? It looks plastic but only plastic parts are inside voith and there would be catastrophic failure if a piece that size got out.
PPS. break off a hacksaw blade to the right length to check the flatness of the flywheel. That way you have a flat of the right size to do it.
Thanks so much for the info so far guys. Gotta love the knowledge on this forum! Quick update: After cleaning up the throw out bearing housing, source of the leak was found. The rear of the "CRAPASS" housing is cracked. See pics. Todd is ordering the Hill Engineering replacement. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login So now the question becomes what all else should we do while we are in there? We are already planning on replacing the triple seals as a preventative measure. They look good now and are not leaking, but the consensus seems to be replace them while you're in there. Let's start by looking at the pressure plate. I didn't have a metal straightedge handy, but by quickly checking it with a yardstick you can see it is somewhat dished. I know the flywheel is supposed to have some dish to it, but what about the pressure plate? Also, is the WSM available online anywhere? Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
If you look at the pic of my new Hills bearing carrier you can see a gap in the seal there Clutch Slave Cylinder Release/Throwout Bearing Replacement incl. Triple Seals If I were you I would clean all the bell housing up etc so its nice and clean, put the TO bearing housing back then refill with fluid etc and bleed your clutch.....doing all of this with no actual clutch or bell housing on. You should see the TO bearing move along the shaft to its stop point or most probably in your case fluid leaking somewhere. You'll soon see where the leak is * * I'm sure you know but make sure the stopper bracket goes over the peg otherwise youll get a face full of bearing! LOL ** If you do above youll need to bleed some fluid out before putting your clutch back otherwise you'll be fighting against the hydraulics. BTW Do all the seals whilst your there - theres 2 tiny ones between the rear housing plus a large one too - have a look at the pics on my thread - it is for a 348 but its had a 355 "convesrion" so double check the part nos
