clutch replacement time

I'm sorry if this has been beaten to death so delete if y'all want to, but I'm looking for advice on clutch and flywheel replacement. I have an 03 mk4 alh jetta with 195xxx miles and the stock clutch started slipping. My car is lightly modded and is my daily driver, I put about 60 miles a day, so I am looking for advice on the proper clutch/flywheel combo. My car is kerma tuned, .205 injectors, bw s7 turbo, straight piped, and egr deleted.

With the mods on the car is it safe to just go back with a dmf and stock clutch or should I look into a stage 2 clutch and or a solid mass flywheel. Part of me says if it lasted 195k on oem equipment then it should be fine going with stock, but in reality the mods were all done within the last 15,xxx miles. I'm afraid if I go back with stock it will prematurely wear everything down.

I'm interested in the answers to this.

this might not be the same situation exactly for you but i thought i would chime in.

I have about 30k miles on my mk7 tdi golf 6spd. soon after going stage 2 I noticed intermittent clutch slippage at low rpm...I read for days and kept researching about the stock clutch limits and realized that the puny stock clutch wasnt going to survive much longer at this power level, so i went ahead and threw in a stage 2 DKM SMF clutch to handle the power. The clutch rattle is annoying and unavoidable with a SMF setup but with the fluidampr installed it is decently quiet everywhere except idle and 2k rpm...outside of those revs it drives like stock and feels perfect.

long story short, do the clutch upgrade. the stock clutch will probably suffer a short and painful life if you go that route again with your mods.

Always better to get rid of the duel mass flywheel in my opinion.

I ran a Stage 3 tune for almost 100k miles after my car already had 100k on the clock, so the stock clutch wasn't slipping at over 200,000 miles. For the last 70,000 miles I have been running a SB Daily Driver 2 and the clutch/assembly is quiet at idle or any other throttle position. For the last year I have been running a Stage 4 tune and have had no issues regardless of outside temperature with the clutch. The pedal pressure does not feel any different than the stock clutch did. To me it was well worth the difference in cost.

Southbend Stage 2 Endurance owner 10K miles

Okay heres my .02 cents...

I installed a Southbend Stage 2 Endurance Clutch and Single Mass Flywheel. I am very happy with it so far i have about 10K miles on mine. It handles the stage 1 tune with ease. The clutch pedal is identical to stock but it grabs harder(obviously) than the stock clutch did...

If you dont plan on upgrading too much i would go with the G60/VR6 combo because its about half the price of the Southbend St 2 Endurance and I'm sure would hold up to atleast a stage 1 tune for a while

It's more clutch than i need at the moment but I dont ever want to have to replace the clutch again so i forked out the money for a good strong clutch.

I plan on eventually installing a VNT17 with a higher stage tune like 3/4 so thats why i went with the SB clutch and SMF.

Another thing is you may hear that the SMF makes noise at idle, like a rattle so to speak.. I had none of that. Clutch is pretty darn quiet at idle.

It all depends on what you plan on doing with the car. If you're leaving stock, you dont have to spend that much on a clutch and flywheel combo...

My next question was about the vr6 clutch. Glad you chimed in, going pick a vw mechanics brain in a few hrs gonna get his opinion on the vr6


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I just had my friction disc relined and it once again held up to all the fuel that pp764s would give through a 10mm pump, burning clean.

This was with a sachs DMF though, the luk ones can toss parts out and wreck stuff bad.

I wouldn't hesitate going with a single mass conversion, go with the ones pieced together from stock replacement parts, the aftermarket offerings are pretty lackluster until you get to ones that are harsh enough to be severely unpleasant.
Get as heavy a flywheel as you can, light weight (moment of inertia, really) is not good with diesel compression, the stock weight one is already why you have a shock absorber on the serpentine belt, and an overrunning alternator pulley.

I have done three SB stage II clutches.


In one case, the SB clutch failed because there is a loop of wire on the
outside of the clutch that acts as a fulcrum and it just broke---symptom
was that the car would just not go---no coupling between engine
and transmission. Plenty of meat left on the disk. I was disappointed

as it is not a trivial job. Search for the thread
I contacted SB and they just ignored me---I think they could have just
replaced that wire and I would have had 200k miles more life



I also did a VR6 clutch on daughter's car.


In all case the DMF clutch was on its way out and was starting to
fail. In two cases the mechanism had permanently shifted so that I could not get to the bolts that hold the dmf on and I had to use a grinder.
I have heard of people getting super long service from a dmf, but

statistically I think it is rare.

cajun87 said:

I'm sorry if this has been beaten to death so delete if y'all want to, but I'm looking for advice on clutch and flywheel replacement. I have an 03 mk4 alh jetta with 195xxx miles and the stock clutch started slipping. My car is lightly modded and is my daily driver, I put about 60 miles a day, so I am looking for advice on the proper clutch/flywheel combo. My car is kerma tuned, .205 injectors, bw s7 turbo, straight piped, and egr deleted.
With the mods on the car is it safe to just go back with a dmf and stock clutch or should I look into a stage 2 clutch and or a solid mass flywheel. Part of me says if it lasted 195k on oem equipment then it should be fine going with stock, but in reality the mods were all done within the last 15,xxx miles. I'm afraid if I go back with stock it will prematurely wear everything down.

Click to expand...

Odds are a standard SMF kit would work fine with your setup, depending on how aggressive a tune you're running. I have our (IDParts) SMF and flywheel kit in my '99.5 Golf with Rocketchip Stage 3 (all else stock) and there's absolutely no sign of slipping. You could go to a G60/VR6 setup it you want a little more headroom.

The lowest cost DMF kit out there is a LUK kit. I'd consider it with a tune only, but not with your setup. It would probably slip.

cajun87 said:

My next question was about the vr6 clutch. Glad you chimed in, going pick a vw mechanics brain in a few hrs gonna get his opinion on the vr6


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

I installed the sachs SMF 21 lbs flywheel and the VR6 clutch in my 2002 bug with Malone stage 2 tune and Bosio DLC520 nozzles. Butter smooth and no slippage what so ever. Got mine from cascade German known as the silent clutch. Idparts also has this combo available.