We have driven the car for 2 1/2 years, had the clutch replaced at
westside chevrolet. The first clutch was burnt, but still working ok.
The second clutch lasted 4 mos. The throwout bearing was completely
burnt, the clutch and pressureplate, flywheel was burnt and heat fractures. We do not drive the car hard, do not do hard launches, do
NOT slip the clutch more than anyone else does. I have driven the car now since the assembly was replaced for 2....TWO friggin days and this morning I heard the throwout bearing making noise again! What in the devil is going on here??? Has anyone had anything like this happen?
I understand that there was some problems with the C6 clutches wanting to come away from the flywheel at high rpms, but other than that I have not known of anything else.
SOMEONE please tell me what is up.

 

What year car? What clutch?

I can only imagine 2 things here
1) installer error - find a good shop to do the install
2) driver error, aka slipping the clutch excessively. I dont think this is the problem. The worst driver in the world could not burn up a clutch in 2 days.

 

2004, bought new. The service at the dealer said they could have gotten another bad t.o.b. The clutch was so bad when they changed it
3days ago, that the t.o.b. had movement over 1/4" out. Everything was
blue, burnt. Am now waiting to see the clutch tonight after this one has been removed. I dont know, there may well be a bad batch of t.o.b.'s. But for some sneaky suspicion, I thing GM has gone to less
desireable vendors of components. we'll see.

 

I would like opinions here.
I went over to westside Chevy and looked at the clutch assy.
today. The two day old clutch, pressure plate, flywheel looked new..
amazing, huh? The throw out bearing was burnt blue.
I asked what they had reordered and was told a new throw out, pilot shaft bearing. I then looked at the pilot shaft bearing that was still in
the crank, and it was destroyed, galled. When I saw this I looked at the shaft pilot. It had scaring, imprints of needle bearings all the way around it. The side face of the bearing facing away from the crank
was gouged at the top side and ground smooth.
I talked to the service writer and told him that the pilot bearing only
lasted for two days, the shaft was scared and marked with bearing imprints and that I wanted to have the shaft replaced. the bearing
will not last running on a shaft in that condition. He spoke to the service foreman. Heres what his answer was.....
That a lot of Corvettes come in here like that, and that the shaft will not hurt the pilot bearing in its condition. And they werent going to replace it. If I am wrong here someone explain. But I believe that I'm about to go postal with this bunch of so called "mechanics, professionals". And they had better not grind the shaft down either,
this will only cause vibration.

 

I feel for you. I hate dealing with incompetent dealers. Stand your ground. Obviously this dealer does not know what they are doing. A pilot bearing should not go out like that. They must have installed it wrong, got some dirt in it or something. They do not want to change th input shaft because GM does not sell just that part. You have to repalce the entire torque tube assembly. This is a lot of extra cost for them. I would make them fix it right though and replace it.

I did have a pilot bearing go bad once. The input shaft was scarred up some as well. I took some sand paper and smoothed it down real well. I have been running it like that for over a year without problems and no vibration. So it might not be a big deal.

Also the only time the shaft should be scarred is if a pilot bearing goes bad. Otherwise it should look like new.

Good Luck, hope you get it fixed.