I bought a Bugeye recently, promised to be running perfectly, save a fuel leak which needed to be repaired before we could drive it. I trusted the seller and had the car picked-up. We fixed the fuel leak and multiple other issues, and on my first drive the clutch was slipping horribly.
This sunk my spirit… now I was in for a nose-off engine-out project, not something I had planned or budgeted for. Most of the sellers we meet are great, and, should there be surprises when we get a car, they are mostly due to lack of experience on the part of the seller, not blatant acts of deceit. This clutch was slipping so badly, it was impossible to cut this seller any slack.
He lied.
Let’s see if we can recover from this unfortunate event with some good learning for all, so that no one ever makes this same mistake (at least with regard to their flywheel). Notice all the pits and corrosion on the flywheel face shown above and below. It was not cut when the clutch was last replaced, so no wonder if slipped so badly. These clutches need all the surface area they can get, and this face is so pitted that the disk is contacting far less than 100% of this flywheel. Old glazing and any lack of flatness isn’t helping.
So make sure to bring your flywheel to your local machine shop next time you change the clutch. Your clutch will thank you, and so will everyone else. Here’s how it looked after we had it faced. We put on a new ring gear too (after the photo below was taken). We sell ring gears in our catalog, if you need one…
