i bought a stage 1 setup back in april. after only 10k the whole setup is junk. the T/O bearing bent causing the clutch to not fully disengage burning up the disc. last thursday the bearing broke into 3 pieces on my way home from work. Spe would not even consider sending me at least a new T/O bearing. all they would do is sell me another setup at a very small discount. why the hell would i want to put the sme junk back in the car? the guy i talked to said 10k out of an aftermarket clutch is not "too bad". i said BS and hung up on him

 

After a couple of my friends specs blew up totaling their cars, I won't even ride in a car with a spec clutch.

 

Both my 400 hp LT1 Camaro and my wife's LS1 Trans Am have SPEC clutches in them. I'm running a Stage II and she's running a Stage III. They work perfectly fine, and have for a long time (5 years for the Camaro, 2 years for the Trans Am). No, I don't baby them, and no, I don't pound the hell out of them either. Who installed the clutch? Did you? Are you qualified to perform such a task? If you took it to a shop, how reputable was the shop? First time dealing with them, or are you a regular customer? Do you race this vehicle a lot? What do you do for launches? Are you the type who lets the clutch out a 2500 rpm, or are you an idiot who dumps the clutch @ 5000+ rpm? Slicks? Street tires? I might believe these "horror stories" more if I never had any experience with SPEC, or if I had a bad experience with one, but I've NEVER had a problem with either of my SPEC clutches...

 

this was 90% highway miles. there piece of crap made in china T/O bearing bent before it broke causing the clutch to not fully disengage. just enough where it was not really noticeable.in order for me to take off from a stop, i had to rev to 2500-3000 or else it would chatter my teeth out of my head. the fact that they would not even accept any responsibility for this premature failure is why i will never do business with them again. and by the way this car has never been race either street or strip. and you can also keep your "idiot" comments to yourself. a so called "performance" clutch should be able to handle a couple of 5k dumps.

 

my buddy has a spec stage III in his 95 Z and me and him like to have a good time in the car and his still works fine

 

50,000 miles of hard use on my stage two spec. all products have some faulty batch (cough msd opti)

Dont bash, you modify your car ure pushing the envelope stop crying

 

I know for a fact the earlier SPEC clutched were not made with the same quality that the newer ones are. My old SPEC stage III chattered all the time, until it was properly broken in. Even then it was a pain to drive in town. But it held up on my 420 RWHP on slicks and DR's for over 10k, and I beat the living sh** out of it! It wasn't until I had an oil leak on the tranny that I decided to change it just incase it got wet. When I opened it up, I found a few springs from the clutch had been just lying in the bottom of my tranny! They fell to the ground when I opened everything up!

After installing my new Stage III, from engagement #1, it has ran smooth and strong with no noise or chatter. It feels much better than my first one, and it still is going strong even with almost 600 RWHP being dumped on it all the time.

Some people will argue that the clutches are bad ones to get. IMO, they are good clutches since their new ones have came out. The biggest seller to me was the price for the clutch for the power level it could withstand.

 

who? and how did it total the car?

 

My Spec 3 has worked just fine for almost 25,000 miles and 4 years.

 

I went through 2 Spec stage 2 clutches both with huge chatter problems. Even after 6K miles they were still annoying. Broke 1 center spring on the first disk and replaced it with another one (should have learned the first time). They were decent to talk to but what really irritated me to no end is I would talk to one of thier tech support guys on my problem with pounding the stops and breaking springs and thier answer was "WOW, this is the FIRST time I have ever heard of this". A week later I would talk to the same guy and he would reply with the same answer and how he had never heard of these problems....... even thought I told him a week prior. I stepped up to a Street Twin and will never go back. With all the money I spent on shipping and 2 stage 2 spec clutches, I would have paid for my ST and had change left over.

Keep in mind this is on an Impala with a mostly stock (intake/exhaust) engine. I learned my lesson. I am glad others have had good experiences but then they would have to to stay in business.

TOM B

 

I beat on my SPEC 3 w/hybrid disk pretty good and it has lasted about 12k miles so far. As far as the throwout bearing problem...don't they just use a oem LT4 vette throwout bearing?