Ferrari Mailing List: Re: 308 clutch wear

[Douglas Anderson (dnt]

Peter notes “. . . the flywheel was all purple spots from the previous owner”

 

A long time ago, lets say late 70’s, a Ferrari tech commented to me, sort of, that the worst new Ferrari owners were old Porsche 911 owners.  Howzat I inquired – Well, with a Porsche you slip the clutch a bit and get on with it.  Ferrari . . . at low revs, just dump it and you move away smartly.  So much mass.  The clutch is a switch.  On-off.

 

I’ve got both a Ferrari and Porsches – a ’71 and new Carrera S to complement our ’78 308 GTS.  I don’t really notice any difference in my style.  Like the song – I’m a man with slow hands – I double clutch a cold 308 up and down and double clutch both Porsches, gently, going down.  Well, a lot of the times, mostly, sort of.

 

I did that racing Porsches and never suffered a reverse rear wheel torque surprise.  After a transmission over haul, drain regular oil and replaced with SWEPCO.  Always used SWEPCO moly for the CV joints.  That was 40 years ago.  Surely there are current lubricants just as good or better.  Heck – we used Castrol bean oil in the RSR.  Yucky stuff.  Sure smell period racing tho.

 

At the shop we did witness one new 911 customer complaining of gear grind no matter what he did and possible locked up pilot bearing to fly wheel.  Had to drop both trans and engine as the input shaft was nearly welded to flywheel.  That was fun to separate.  Like two mating dogs.  Previous shop didn’t lubricate pinion bearing in flywheel.  Tut tut.

 

Peter – your clutch hardly looks used.  You must have the right touch.  Nice.

 

Cheers

Doug

 

 

 

From: Ferrari <ferrari-bounces+dnt=dock.net [at] ferrarilist.com> On Behalf Of Peter Rychel

As I slowly chip away at my rebuild job, I removed the clutch yesterday and I was quite pleasantly surprised to see the wear on the components. Considering this is 20,000+ miles worth of driving,  there’s very little heat-check markings and only a narrow strip of discoloration on the plate. This is in far better condition when I removed the previous clutch 19 years ago (where the plate was really worn down and the flywheel was all purple spots from the previous owner).

 

I’m thinking I’m just going to throw these back on when I’m buttoning up this job.

 

Peter

 

 

 

 

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