WARNING - #1 reason why clutches fail revealed - STANDARD vs. AFTERMARKET DYNO TEST

In this video, we're going to talk about how a clutch works. We're going to test different clutches on a clutch dyno, what happens to them when they fail and why, and how to prolong the life of your clutch. And then we're going to look at one of the newest innovations in clutch design to hit the market. A clutch's job is to engage and disengage drive between your engine and your gearbox. On the back of your engine is a flywheel which spins as you drive. Bolted to that is the clutch assembly, which also spins. The clutch sits between your gearbox and your engine, and its sole job is to disengage and engage drive between the two so you can change gears. Press pedal in, clutch disengages drive, you change gears, release clutch pedal, drive engaged. Inside the clutch assembly is this plate here called a clutch disc. It uses this material here and friction to grab onto the flywheel and connect the gearbox drive to the engine. Therefore, when the clutch disc is connected to the flywheel and the gearbox, it will turn the input shaft of the gearbox and you get drive. But how does it connect and disconnect? When you depress your clutch pedal, it essentially pushes on this arm here which holds this little bearing. The bearing pushes on these little fingers which then compress the plate and lift the clutch disc away from the flywheel. Then when you let your foot off the clutch, the disc reattaches to the flywheel and you get drive. One of the most common areas your clutch will fail will be a failure of this friction material you can see here on both of these clutch discs. Your clutch has a really hard job of clamping to something that's spinning incredibly fast, and that's just in normal operation. Every time you change gear, you're connecting and disconnecting the clutch plate from the flywheel. So over time, it will wear down and require replacement. When you ride your clutch, it's this friction material not fully clamping to the flywheel. That's why you get that really bad smell when you ride the clutch. You're literally wearing down this material, the same as you would on a brake pad on a brake disc. Other examples of what can destroy your clutch are improper driving style and having a much higher output engine than what the clutch is rated for. There are other areas where a clutch can often be blamed as a failure when in actual fact, it's other areas in the clutch system like in particular, the hydraulics, your clutch master cylinder and slave cylinder can fail. Even the hard line down to the slave cylinder and of course, the clutch fork inside the gearbox. These are all things that can fail if they're not maintained, particularly when you change the clutch. And a lot of people will then go and change their clutch out thinking that was the problem, only to find it was something much more simple. The reason that you get different size clutches to suit different engine outputs is everything can handle the low better. If you get a higher performance clutch to suit a higher output engine, everything's going to be bigger and stronger and can handle that power. For example, you're not going to put a standard Suzuki clutch behind an LS engine in a patrol, but that's why you need to adapt the clutch to suit the engine and gearbox combination that you've got in your vehicle, which is where Clutch Industries comes in. For example, if you have a high output engine with a standard clutch, that friction material was never designed to handle the increased power and especially torque. And in some cases, you can even explode this friction material and lose the clutch completely. This can also happen from abusing the clutch. Dropping the clutch, riding it, aggressive gear changes and especially slipping can cause the clutch to wear faster and in some cases, fail completely. We've seen how and why a clutch can fail, but what about solutions for a clutch that are actually going to last? For a long time, the most effective upgrade for a clutch, if you run bigger tyres, you chase power out of your vehicle, you towed a heavy load or you generally just work your four-wheel drive hard, was to fit a heavy duty variant. As the name suggests, everything is heavier duty and stronger, but that comes at a bit of a cost, particularly for the old left leg. It's harder on your leg, it's a bit harder on the clutch hydraulic system and if you use your four-wheel drive in stop, start, city traffic, it can get a bit tiring. But now, another option is one of these, a uniclutch four-terrain. A twin-plate uniclutch can handle 2000 Newton metres of torque. That's as much as a truck clutch can handle. The reason why is due to the twin plates, so you can get double the torque into the same diameter clutch. Imagine if your clutch could handle what this truck clutch could, but still fit in your four-wheel drive. Twin-plate clutches are starting to find their way into OEM vehicles too, like the JL Wrangler, which has a twin plate from factory. The reason they're becoming so popular is because you get double the torque capacity of a standard clutch, without the pedal effort of a heavy duty clutch. Clutch industries have a history of manufacturing OEM clutches for a bunch of different vehicle manufacturers. What that's allowed for is a bunch of awesome testing equipment that they still use to this day on their whole range of clutches, and in particular, the new Uniclutch. That's exactly what's happening over here. So, this machine is testing the longevity and durability of the internal components in this clutch disc, in particular, the dampening system. See these springs here are coming on and off? What this machine is doing is testing and simulating coming on and off the power. It'll be doing it over a million times. After that, the engineers will remove the clutch disc, strip everything apart, measure everything, check over everything, and look for signs of normal wear and anything that's not like it should be. What's interesting is just putting my hand there, I can feel the temperature coming off this clutch disc. If I put this thermal camera here, that's sitting at around 33-34 degrees, and it's going to be cycling it over a million times, as I said. That's really cool. But, over here, you've seen this machine before. This is their clutch dyno, and right now, it's running a test on two clutches. On the left-hand side, is a standard Ford Ranger clutch. On the right-hand side, we've got the Uniclutch 4-terrain. What's really cool about this test, though, is it's going to be simulating three clutch life cycles in a condensed period of two weeks. A standard clutch life cycle is around about 150,000 k's. So, in two weeks, this is going to be simulating these clutches doing 450,000 k's. Then, the engineers are going to strip them apart, once again, measure everything, check over it, so they know that their clutches are good to go. We repeatedly put 800 newton meters through the Uniclutch 4-terrain, and it took it like an absolute champ. Compared to the standard OEM clutch, receiving the same torque that caps out at just 511 newton meters, where it starts to slip and burn itself out, barely reaching its first life cycle of 150,000 k's. The Uniclutch looks nice and cool, sitting around 95 degrees after we ran 800 newton meters through it. That's all thanks to this active intercooler. This part here. Why do you want that? As we know, clutches use friction to clamp onto the flywheel. But, the hotter the clutch disc gets, the less effective it'll be, and the faster it'll wear out. Think of it like a brake rotor on your car. These fins help to get rid of the heat faster. The harder you work them, the hotter they get, and the longer it'll take to stop. Now that we've seen just how much the Uniclutch 4-terrain can handle for all the durability testing that clutch industries do, I thought we'd strip one apart to show you what makes up a Uniclutch. So, first up, you've got your flywheel friction surface here. Now, this is the reason that you don't need to remove your existing flywheel when you install Uniclutch. This becomes your new flywheel, and your old flywheel essentially just becomes a mounting surface for your Uniclutch, and essentially it becomes a ring gear to help start your vehicle. That's pretty much it. This will do all the work that your old flywheel did. First up, I'm going to throw these little springs on these dowel pins here. Now, what these do is, you might have heard with traditional twin plate clutches what's called chattering, where basically everything will vibrate and move around. These little springs will stop that, so the Uniclutch is nice and quiet. Now they're on, I'm going to chuck in the first clutch disc like that. Next up, we have the intermediate plate. This intermediate plate sits on here like that, over those springs, and then you've got the second set to go over the dowels. Then we've got our second clutch disc, our pressure plate, and then finally the clutch cover and diaphragm. Now, all that needs to happen from here is install the bolts with some Loctite and torque them up to spec. The good thing is, you won't need to do this. Your Uniclutch will come pre-assembled and ready to go to install in your vehicle with an adapter ring to suit heaps of different flywheels. Just thought it was really cool to show you the internal components of a Uniclutch and what makes them so efficient in so many different vehicles. The other advantage of a Uniclutch is you can adapt it to suit lots of different engine and gearbox combinations. So, if you've done an engine conversion or you've done a gearbox conversion in your four-wheel drive, this clutch will be able to adapt to suit. To do that, you get yourself one of these fitment kits and to show you what I mean, I've got a flywheel off an LS1 and I've got a flywheel off a KUN26 Hilux. The only things that will change here are the adapter ring to suit your specific flywheel and when you get yourself a fitment kit and the instructions off the Uniclutch website, you'll be able to figure out which gear you'll need for your specific vehicle and if you need spaces for it. Installation is really straightforward as well. To install your Uniclutch, bolt your Uniclutch to your adapter ring and then bolt the whole assembly to the flywheel. Now, next up, you can actually do this before you bolt the clutch on or after like I'm doing, but you pick your specific input gear to suit your vehicle in the instructions. You pop him in down there and then you've got this circlip. Really important that this one goes in and they're sitting nice and flat. With that circlip in, just give it a little tap to make sure it's seated properly. That's really important and then once this is bolted onto the flywheel, your gearbox is ready to go back on. Now again, this clutch will also work on this adapter ring for an LS1. The only things that change will be that little input gear depending on the instructions in your specific engine and the gearbox. You've also got some spaces in the fitment kit depending on the height you need to set your clutch at, which varies from engine to engine, so you can just check on the website for more info. But that's how easy it is to install a Uniclutch onto your existing flywheel and the fact you don't need to remove it from the engine saves you a lot of time. There is so much information out there about clutches, but hopefully this video has helped you understand a little bit more about how a clutch works and provided you with some information on one of the newest clutch options to hit the market. Clutches haven't really changed in the last 50 years, so it's exciting to see a new innovative clutch option coming out of Australia. Perfect for engine conversions or gearbox conversions and if you've got one in your project, let us know. Would a Uniclutch be perfect? You can get these in multiple countries now, including Australia, New Zealand and the US. Thanks for watching, we'll catch you next time.