Just thought I would post in here, as I was made aware of this thread last night.
As you saw in the first post Ashley linked to, we sent out a replacement clutch a few months ago when he started having issues. We paid for that out of our pocket as SouthBend wanted to see this kit before covering it under warranty. To cut a long story short SouthBend would not pay warranty on the part, so we were stuck with the bill.
The second clutch then started giving Ashley problems pretty quickly, which to us points at another issue with the vehicle. However, the car became undrivable before we could try anything else, and ultimately we end up with the disaster that you see in the first photos.
This time Ashley did not want another SouthBend Kit, so we sent a new Pressure Plate and Slave Cylinder free of charge, and a Sachs Race Clutch Disc for our cost price.
Since we did not do any of the work, we cannot speculate on what has caused this issue, but there are too many factors that can cause a clutch to fail, such as bending the disc during install (by not lining the Input Shaft correctly), not bedding it in sufficiently or other external factors that increase wear. Play in the input shaft quickly kills the Disc, and a Faulty Master Cylinder (as mentioned in Ashley’s previous post) can cause the exact damage seen here.
We did a clutch job on a Mk4 Golf last week. The Standard Dual Mass would not clear but had been in around 80k so the customer just expected normal wear. When we took it apart, the rivets holding the marcel fins to the centre of the disc were ripped out. Turned out the Master Cylinder was sticking (at first randomly, but was now all the time) meaning the brand new Clutch and Flywheel would not bleed up. We swapped the Master Cylinder (about 1hrs work in a Mk4 Golf), bled the system and all was well.
We do not like playing the blame game, as it gets you nowhere. We also do not want unhappy customers as I am sure everyone who has dealt with us will know.
In light of this, we have currently removed the SouthBend products from our website until we have a response from SouthBend. We have had no support from them with the last few issues we have had, which as the UK distributor for their products is not acceptable. Don’t get me wrong, we have sold nearly 100 SouthBend kits and the
problem rate is in the low single figures (considering with CG Motorsport we had a failure rate of 80%!!!), but without the support of the manufacturer, we are stranded. We have paid the warranty out of our own pockets for several kits (minor issues) and this cannot continue.
We are currently testing our own SMF Kits for the 6 Speeds in some of our project cars as we speak, and these will be released for sale very shortly, but only when we have tested them sufficiently to be confident we won’t have issues with quality.
I hope that clears up our position on the matter, and we hope Ashley gets his car sorted as soon as possible.
Thanks
Scott
