I have 700 miles on the new silent design. It is awesome! No hint of the gear clatter that plagued the older design(s)! The stage II daily is still as smooth and easy as the OEM DM flywheel. I am happy I upgraded to the SM flywheel. I feel I now have the durability of the SM design with the smoothness of the DM design! I recommend this to anyone considering a clutch swap, upgrade, or replacement.
I will comment again on this after a few thousand miles.
-JR
Thanks JR
It has been a pleasure working with you, I hope we can do more in the future!
As a side note, we have the Southbend Silent Design Clutches in stock for the 02J 5 speed transmissions , [the 5 speeds in our TDI's].
There is also a Silent Design for the 6 Speed 02M transmission.
As far as we know no one else has the 02J Silent Design... as I wrote on April 7 ; I think eventually every Southbend Dealer will have the new Silent Design
But I don't think that anyone else has this product, and Silent Design Southbend 02J clutches have to ship from kerma
Silent Design means Southbend's newest and best 02J 5 speed clutch
We have had calls about 'quiet' Southbend clutches or 'quiet' TDI clutches that are not Southbend. Like last Fall, this 'Silent / Quiet' terminology has a lot of people confused
So to answer those questions for everyone:
We supply our Silent Design kit complete with all Southbend parts ... no substituted parts
There is no 'quiet' design from Southbend... there is the newest upgrade Southbend 02J clutch that has been named the Silent Design ..sort of by popular demand
There are also some less expensive option from Sachs that are nice.
IMHO, they are not as nice as the new Southbend product and they won't have the power handling... but these are a quality option also...and we have the lowest price on the Sachs kits
Naturally , I would rather support Southbend and sell the stronger clutches, but the right Sachs is a good product... especially for mild builds
Southbend has supported the TDI community with the best and widest range of performance clutch products for many years... and so I like to support Southbend