Earl H

Awhile back, I indicated that I had a problem with my recently purchased Exedy Twin Disk clutch setup. I have just rec’d word from them and feel comfortable relaying my experience. Hopefully I will be able to help some of you save a few dollars as you decide on which clutch to buy.

I purchased an Exedy Twin in Nov. of last year for about $1500, which is actually a pretty good price as most pay more than $1,700. I paid the normal $500 for the install bringing the total spent to more than $2000. Not a small chunk of change, but I was ok with spending that much because I was assured that the clutch would handle more than 800hp. I put the recommended 500 miles on the car (both highway and stop and go traffic) to break the clutch in. The clutch felt great. The Exedy engagement is second to none..a little better than stock almost. That wasn’t the only thing that was little better than stock (i.e ability to hand high hp cars).

I had recently made a few changes to the my car and needed to retune so I drove my car to my local dyno which was about 60 miles from my house. I did about 4 pulls over the span of about 2 hours. None of the pulls were clean because my tires continued to spin on the rollers (Pilot Sports). I decided to take the car off the dyno and to do a quick burnout in the parking lot to heat them up. I did just that, one burnout, and put the car back on the rollers. I did the first pull and I couldn’t believe it my tach shot to 5k rpm. I did one more pull…same thing. I came to the immediate realization that I had just lost 2K. My clutch was gone. I tried to drive it home, but about 10 miles from house the car would not move forward. I had to have the car towed home…yet another expense.

There was no way in the world that I was going to buy another Exedy, but I decided to give them a chance to make good on their product. My installer sent the clutch in to be inspected for warranty (IN NOVEMBER). After more than 2 mos., I just rec’d word that there is nothing that they can do for me. Now if I had gone to the track and made 1 decent pass, I would have been able to accept this…because that’s kind of how it goes. But I never even made it down the ¼ once. Hell I hadn’t even gone full throttle on the street with it. I started digging to see what other hi-hp cars were doing for a clutch because I needed to do something…even considered going to an auto. I spoke to 5 other vette guys that were running a lot of power regarding what they were using for a clutch. It led back to McCloed and Spec and a few others. What was interesting was that many of those guys had used the Exedy Twin and relayed similar experiences (to mine) Many of them knew of others that had similar experiences. I won’t name names , but I’ll leave it up to them to chime in if they choose. There is a thread on the forum that talks about some of the Exedy problems, so these aren’t anomolies. Funny things is…not too long after my fiasco (no saying that my issues played a roll in this), they lowered the hp/tq rating of their street twin. It seems that these weren’t isolated incidents. Yet they told their distributors that they were. Yeah, a few occurrences are isolated incidents…there were clearly more than a few. Bottom line is…the hp ratings for their clutches are overrated. Even if this was a quality control problem, which it could be. Do you want to be the guy that gets stuck with the bill for their quality issues. I paid $2k for a $1,500 – 1,800 clutch, I would have expected more. In this case, I didn’t get what I paid for.

For you guys that have these clutches already, you may be ok…don’t know. Besides, there is nothing you can do about it now, except to make sure your AAA Gold membership is paid up. For guys considering purchasing this clutch, save your money and buy something else. There is a triple coming out that is supposed to cost more than $3K. BUYER BEWARE!!!!!

McCleod seems to be the best option. I sent my old clutch in to be rebuilt. Turnaround was 1 day (1 ½ weeks total including ship time) and it only cost $300. Plus I can upgrade to a sintered iron disk setup which will hold 1000rwhp. The upgrade price is reasonable and if you were buying this setup from scratch, it would be much less than the Exedy.

I am truly disappointed at the outcome of this, but live and learn. Hopefully this will save some of you a few dollars.

Dope

Wow that sucks. Just curious - how much power are you making at the wheels?

Be careful with the McCleod, I've read about many many more issues with that clutch than the Exedy. Look for J-Rod's thread, he does a good summary of the mcleod, the exedy, and his new clutch. Might be helpful.

Dope

Bill Curlee

Thank you very much for the info! Sorry to see that you are out of so much money!

BC

Sportsdude

Thanks for the warning and sorry for your loss on the $2K clutch. I was going to buy the twin but after your experience, I will have to look at other model.

NEPTUNEBILL

This post is also on the perf section and the FI section and there is a lot of additional info check it out--

Gus

This is one or two clutches out of thousands that have been sold. Why not take a poll to see how many people are satisfied with there chose and how many are not.
Dont make a decision cause of one perons results.
I do feel for you Earl. It happened to me with Fidanza flywheel. They sent me a 10.5 steel insert instead of a 11 inch and it damaged my clutch and the flywheel. And even though they sent me the wrong part they claimed it was race item and I should be lucky I'm getting a replacement. Race parts aren't warrantied. So I had to eat the labor cost and clutch twice cause of there mistake.
I currently run the McLeod dual disc and will be yanking that out and installing one of there triple disc's. I will post my results and experiances.

LS1LT1

Damn, it's like a never ending thing with these very expensive Exedy's, they were supposed to be the next great thing, guess not.

I'd go with a Cartek clutch. www.cartek.net

RoHo

Wow!!! what did Exedy say to you & with a clutch this new why wouldn't they stand behind it? It seems to me that they would have at least met you half way just to keep there name in good standing.

I don't need a clutch yet but I know it's time is coming and was actually considering an Exedy but your not the first one I have seen on the forum that was very dissapointed with there Exedy results. It's not like there selling these units at a bargin price, if you know what I mean.

Gus

There were also some issues with the cartek clutch if I remeber correclty.

RoadRebel

This is not an isolated case..

There are multiple issues, hit the search in this forum..There also is another thread in the Forced induction section with more information.

Phil

LS1LT1

But apparently costing in excess of $2k and not holding the bare minimum of power like the Exedy aren't among them though. Just ask all the guys cutting repeated 1.4 sixty foots on stock suspensions with anywhere from 350-590rwhp all while driving to the track in constant stop and go traffic.
Go back far enough in history and you might find some flaws in any great product.

IFLUBYU

I value your post and love the fact that this forum is here to discuss just this kind of thing. I do believe you need to be more forthcoming with your power level and setup, and also describe your break-in, for this information to be usable to the community. I believe the Hyper-Twin was rated for right around 800rwhp/tq, how much above that were you? N20? FI? Turbo? Gears?

This is the second major post I have seen where there weren't too many details, such as I described. It doesn't lend credence to your claim if you don't back it up with some tech data.

I do agree the price is hard to justify, but I have read more posts about people burning up McLeods, Rams, Carteks, and Specs that they just didn't seem like worth the labor to install. Now if I had the ability to do my own clutch install... I might have a different clutch.

Anyway, I'll keep beating my Hyper-Twin like it owes me money again, and if it goes, well on to the next thing. Comes with the territory...

Good Luck!

Earl H

I think most of the info was in my original post, but I'll answer the questions again.

1.)Break-in: 500 miles of both highway and stop-and-go. No 100% throttle runs.
2.)HP: on the dyno (dynojet): ~ 700rwhp @ 13 or so lbs. but the tires kept spinning on the rotors so I turned the boost down to 12psi for the burnout and subsequent runs...therefore I was well below the hp level..
3.) Type of FI: Turbo
4.)Main type of use: Primarily street... a little track. However, car never made it past the first dyno tuning session (on Pilot Sport Street Tires) so that point isn't really relevant. NOTE: THE CAR BROKE DURING DYNO RUNS NOT DURING DRAG PASSES. If I made it down the 1/4 at least once, I would have never even sent the clutch in for warranty!
5.) Install info: performed by professional that was involved in early LS1 durability testing
6. ) Gears: stock Z06

I will answer any questions asked. I wish there were more to my story, but there isn't. From some of the posts, its clear that I'm not alone. Exedy had all of this info before they made their decision. The facts are what they are. My installer has even chimed in this thread...and I have a someone (dyno operator) that witnessed the actual failure. I even have the time/date stamped logs from the day that the clutch failed which gives me the ability to demonstrate when the clutch failed.

Bink

Hmmmmm.....seems like Exedys don't like rollers.

0Cunningham Motorsports

i beat the living crap out of my exedy twin, never flinches, makes a little bit of noise while taking off from a stop light, but other then that is great, but i am also making alot less power (470 rwhp), but soon to be on the bottle, we will see i guess

JWz06

This clutch is truly the strongest clutch available today.It is what all 6 speed cars should run making more than 600 rwhp,LPE and 21CMC use them on a few of their heavy hitters.

As far as j rod problem with mcloud.I would ask him if he had one of these centerd iron models,My Guess is no!

IFLUBYU

Excellent, thanks for posting that. And I apologize if I missed the info in an earlier post. I was told to put 1000 miles break in on mine, and did 1500 just to make sure. Not sure if that may have been a factor.
I would say the Exedy Twin should have been able to handle that power level. Alot of the cars they put clutches on are twin turbos, so I don't see that being a problem. The turbo lag should have given the clutch plenty of time to set. With an SC, especially a roots type SC at 750+rwtq I would have been a little concerned about that much torque hitting the drive train at that low rpm, but such is not the case. Same with N20 if fogging on the drop.
My choice of clutches with an iron flywheel would have been the Spec V, a good drag racing clutch but regardless what they say, it'll be a miracle if it lasts more than a single season. Phil97Svt has gotten great performance with a RAM coupled with a Fidanza aluminum flywheel, and he was fogging the juice while staged, heh

Hope your next clutch works out better, or at least cheaper!

For reference, on the C5 I have had experience with the LS1, LS6 and now Exedy Hyper-Twin which I still stand by. It may just be that my power level is low enough to just not threaten failure, but that's part of the design, overbuilding the drivetrain. If I was at 700-800 rwhp, I would try to build a drivetrain to handle 1000rwhp, if that's possible.

Good Luck!

Fastguy

Best clutch for a modded C5, There will never be an answer.
I haven't seen a single manufacturer that hasn't had good and bad feedback from this forum.
It barks like a sea lion when its cold and chatters on mild launch but I can live with that from my Spec III because it holds.

Bink

I wonder if it depends on the installer?? Especially if LPE uses them on their Turbos.

ArKay99

It seems to me the drive train is reliable to around 470rwhp-420rwtq. Go higher than that and things start breaking. So, we spend more money to put supposedly stronger components at each point in the drivetrain to hold the power we are now making. We only have the manufacturers claims as to the performance levels the components are rated at and feedback from the guys that have these components installed. I feel from your description Earl, that Exedy dropped the ball on customer service here. If what you are saying is true, and you can document it, Exedy owes you a new clutch, even from implied warranty. They TOLD you and everybody else the clutch was designed to hold 800rwhp. I'm sure that is the main reason for purchasing that particular clutch. The next reason I would by a clutch is warrany. To say this is a 'race item' and warranties don't apply doesn't wash for me. You were operating the clutch within the manufacurer's ratings, and it was almost brand new. They at least owe you a new clutch in my opinion.