Clutch And Trans Questions...
 

OK guys - new to the site and glad to be here.

I have the 5spd. and will be making significant engine upgrades soon. Looking for input on what clutch to use - Southbend CON FE or Luk? Also - will the 5spd hold up? Are there any upgrades to be done to the trans? Would a 6 spd be a better building block? THANKS

Eric

I just put a valair 600hp clutch in my truck and love it the clutch pedal feels like it did when it was stock but you can definatly feel it engage and dis engage. I have heard alot of people say bad things about valair but usually its people that have never used their product most the time the response I get when I ask why they dont like them is "its not southbend" or something along those lines. Their clutch's come with a warranty and for their price they really cant be beat.

Something else you need to look into is this http://dieseldawgs.com/product_info....oducts_id=1459

what do ya plan on doing with the truck??

what kinna power levels are you trying to achieve??

I'd like to be somewhere around 550...I don't know how attainable that is...
sticks, TST, Smarty, TT kit from Bell turbo. We'll see what happens.
Whitmore - How much of a difference did all of your suspension mods make? What exactly are the KW side impact rails? And how do you like your HTT manifold?

If you can get a hold of 6LCummins he can give you GREAT info on Valair clutches. I know he is running one as well as his brother and they have been pulling their trucks too.

well .....IMho if yer gonna do pulls with it then ya need to do double disc.....several manufactures make a good double disc clutch

if yer just lookin for a good all around truck to have fun with then a single disc clutch will work just fine for ya

I do alot of towing so I opted to go with the southbend CON OFE...............good for 500 hp I think.........I am very happy with the clutch as well as customer support I recieved during instalation .

the clutch market has come a long ways in the last decade and alot of good and dependable systems are out there .........make a thread in the request a price forum and alot of our site sponsers will shoot ya some quotes and what they recommend


also here is some good nv4500 reading for ya

https://www.dieselbombers.com/showth...ghlight=nv4500

At 550hp you will be testin the limits of the NV4500. You will definately need to upgrade the mainshaft in it if you haven't yet. The 6 speed is a much heavier tranny and will handle the HP but it has it's downsides also. Parts are hard to come by and the exchange is gonna run you about $3000 if you do the work yourself.

I love my Southbend and can't myself going to anything else in the future but I can't say anything bad about the others either cause this is the only one I have usedmyself.

Keep in mind that anything over 450hp or so you are gonna have to start upgrading many other parts here. A stock truck with some toys will do 400-450 pretty cheap and easy, over that and you need to be serious about what your doin.

At around 500-550 hp you should really start thinking of a dual disc in my opinion. I run a Southbend Fe and it is a grabby sob. I've beat the crap out of mine though and never slipped it. I'm waiting for Valairs dualdisc to come out and I'm going with it. I have to many coals in the fire right now though to look that far ahead. Southbend and Valair are the big players in the single disc feild you usually hear about. Dual Disc there are a ton out there if you really look around.

What kind of extra upgrades are we talking about?

When matchin a clutch to a truck you have to look at a few different things.

1.) What is the truck mainly going to be used for?
2.) How high HP/TQ are you wanting to go?


Those are the first questions i always ask. 6 speed wont make the clutch hold any better. just more expensive and harder to find parts for. In my opinion the only reason to have a 6 speed is if u have a trailer of 12K pounds or more on the truck 5 days a week. Other wise it is just a waste and more gears to shift. If you are looking at going to 550-600HP then i would say our Full feramic clutch is the way to go. It is dyno proven at 680HP before slipping in a 800HP Cummins. I would go with the Heavy Duty center section to help keep it together because that is usually the weak point of a clutch disc. The pressure plate rating on the HD is 3800 pounds and is what actually holds the power. Input shaft is a good thought on upgrading, and you will also wanna beef up your driveline.

Nick

Welcome Nick, when is the dual disc going to be released? I'm going to be sled pulling next year some and running right under 600hp so what do you recomend?

Andy

He knows what he is talking about, you are right there. And he is runnin our first design of the Full ceramic clutch and his brother has our full feramic in his truck.

Well we are waiting on the flywheels to be finished up right now. Was supposed to be in early January but the last batch we got we didnt like the flywheel so we had them make some changes which meant they had to make new dies and that has delayed it a ton. Im personally hoping to get them no later than late January but it all depends on how they turn out this time. I will keep everyone up to date on the release because we have many waiting on them, incuding A guy in Iowa building a sled truck.

Is it going to be a full on sled puller??? Or is it going to stay your daily driver??? If its going to be a daily driver our lower rated dual disc will do just fine. But if u are only going to be an all out puller i would recommend the higher HP rated pulling DD. If you are just looking for once in a while pulling a single disc will hold up but will just not last as long as a dual disc. We have a customer that has put 10+ sled pulls a single disc full ceramic clutch. He has reported back that it has only gotten grabbier after the abuse he has put it through and is still holding strong and is not slipping to this date. And has an estimated 25,000 miles on that clutch.

I plan between 25-50 hooks a year starting in 09 and everyday driver. It will also pull my trailers still. If you can will you PM me some prices on the differetn clutches.

Andy

Off the top of my head that I can think of is going to be issue with EGT's. This means you will need to address a larger turbo, larger inner-cooler, larger exhaust and air intake. In additon to these things would be the high pressure boots and Fire ring the head. I know there is more but this is a quick list of the highlights.

These trucks hold pretty well up to the 450hp mark, after that you are creating weak spots all over the place.

Part of the build-up is to do a nice TT kit from Bell turbo. I figured an intercooler and boots would be part of the equation also. I was hoping to not tear the engine apart yet. It's got 150k on it and still runs strong. I haven't done a compression check yet, but it feels really good. I figured it'd bomb it and then refresh it once the engine got tired. Fire ring has to be done once you pass 45 psi or so right? The truck tows every once in awhile, and has been pulled from daily driver duty. I'm trying to turn it into my hotrod truck - so to speak, but I don't want to absolutely anhilate reliability either...

It can be done with a lot of work and money, but no matter how you look at it HP equals Heat and excess heat kills. That's just the down side of the games we play.