Learn How a Clutch Works - Basic Clutch Operation and Tips

my name I did a video on YouTube just go to gearbox videos comm and check out the video I get that same question every week people call up complain about grinding and reverse and hard shifting and I have to tell them that it's actually clutch release is your problem dad you got dragging dancing or something else is going on they don't want to believe me so I decided to do this video on heart how clutches actually work hope you like it these are your major components of a clutch setup just happens to be a diaphragm clutch uh from Santa Force where they have these extra weights on it that when the unit is spinning sand typically they apply more pressure on the plate holding it in place better supposedly anyway take this off here for you this is your flywheel the ring gear the flywheel attaches to your starter you start is what spins the engine on this wheel here is a heavy-duty billet steel flywheel that they sell 30 pound wheel both to the crank using these bolt holes over here pilots on the crank with this register bore over here so it's always on center with the crankshaft flywheel is spinning with the engine at all times if the engine stop the wheel is stopped if it's spinning the flywheel is spinning your disc hangs out in between the flywheel and this pressure plate so the pressure plate is activated by these Springs here when you press down on these Springs using a release bearing what happens is the plate will move away from the flywheel releasing the disc and allowing it to be free of both components when it's bolted together like this and sandwich then locked if you notice this little gap over here when you bolt this thing down and you torque it down whatever the flywheel and the impression plate combination is rated at if it's rated at 2,100 pounds that's your clamping force so what happens is when you press down on this with the release bearing you're going to release simply the pressure from this and allowed us to freewheel in between these two components other than that it's always locked a hundred percent your input shaft is flying to the clutch disc of the transmission so there's 26 blinds set up so they're kind of like that okay so what happens is if it's spinning independently like this that would be maybe like neutral something like that or when you're in between gears in neutral position to put your pedal down the whole engine can spin around and this disc can stay stationary when you lock it together and you clamp this baby taunt it is you're gonna lock this to that and then everything is going to spin in one shot like that altogether a couple of things to know a lot of problems with clutches are related to release more than slipping clutch is different out and they wear and then they slip but believing that most of the issues that I have are with people not getting good enough clutch release so why is that how come we don't have enough release here what happens is sometimes people have a bearing a release bearing that's too far away geometrically something has changed so when they go through that pedal travel and the pedal moves this thing isn't pressing this down enough to get release a lot of people use a free plane method a free plane method is simply free play between the bearing and the thing is of the diaphragm so what happens is maybe this is like say a half inch free play so your pedal travel okay before it makes contact is your free play what happens is sometimes you'll have too much free play and that doesn't allow these fingers to release the disc enough and you're gonna dragging this which can cause shifting issues grinding in Reverse issues stuff like that so what happens is a lot of times too is when you buy all these new components new flywheel the pressure plate your clutch disc and everything the heights may not necessarily be the same in relationship to the belt house and think of this bell housing is wrapped around it okay and what happens is you have before that's kind of over here holding this in place if this thing moves you know closer to it or away from it because there's some change maybe that flywheel it's been machine or whatever sometimes you don't get the correct geometry and you may have to check things out first so what I always recommend is when I put together a system like this I'll put everything together without the transmission I'll put maybe a dummy input shaft in like that okay I'll put this bearing on here like this I'll have somebody press on the clutch and I'll kind of hold this in place and see if it releases you know by manually grabbing this and turning it and if it doesn't then I know I have a release issue don't forget that when you're spinning a very high rpms like 6000 rpms if you don't get a clean release you're gonna get miss shifts so that's it it's very simple remember it's pressure plate sandwiches the disc to the flywheel when you press down using the release bearing on these fingers like this they move up they move the plate away and allow this to freewheel in between the two pieces very simple few things to note hubs on discs have offsets you can see that this one is offset towards the engine side okay and not towards the clutch that towards the input shaft side that's important sometimes to understand your offsets because you can have clearance issues with hubs hitting this you can have clearance issues with flywheel bolts hitting the the springs over here you can have issues if it was flipped around let's say the hub is offset this way that it bottoms out on the spline on the input this input shaft has basically a spline that you can't bottom out on it can actually slide right through it but some input shafts where they have kind of like a spline that ends here like that literally you can have a poor release issue because the input can actually pushed the whole disk up against the flywheel because there's not enough movement here we need to check all this stuff out you know sometimes I forget that a lot of people actually don't see what goes on inside the transmission so let me explain something this is a reverse gear this is how it works it's a simple gear that slides like this into another gear it's called a non synchronized gear so what happens is even with the slightest movement of the transmission turning you'll get this little grinding noise going on so when people hear that reverse is grinding it's because these two gears need to be completely stopped in order for the gear to actually slide into one another so any slight turn as you can hear will cause reverse to grind so here I am just turning this ever so slightly okay and we get a little bit of a rip a little bit of a grind so to speak so when you hear people crunch reverse it's because the transmission does not slow down and or it's maybe it's not disconnected completely from the engine the gears internally in the transmission have synchronizes there's a synchronized gear for one and two and three and four so these can somehow sometimes be spinning a little bit and we'll break a dragging clutch that's loose because the synchronizer ring acts like the clutch in itself so these will not grind is if you have a little bit of a dragon clutch so reverse over here is always the reason you can check to see if you've got a disc that's grinding or sometimes up front the pilot pushing inside the crankshaft if that is binding on it where sometimes when you'll see engines heat up and also you get hard shifting it's because the bushing expands and contract and holds this input shaft and it attaches it to the crank as well so in order for us to have good shifting ability and not grind into reverse we have to have a super clean clutch release and a bushing on the input shaft that is always free and spinning clean here's my input shaft for the transmission it's an inch and 1/8 diameter by 26 spline it's a very common size using a lot of new transmissions this is my clutch disc it's got matching hub with the same spline what I want to show you first of all is whenever you put a disc on a transmission you know when you're doing is something you want to make sure that they slide in and out nice and easy like this but importantly what I want to show you is its function a lot of people don't understand how this thing works and I've kind of got this camera zoomed in them over here so you could see a little bit better so what you think everything I'm doing right over here I'm just kind of spinning this thing and everything is going along all together but what you don't realize is that this disc when I spin this disc like this is actually riveted here to this plate to these Springs which drive the hub below it so the disc is joined to the spring plate here okay through those Springs to the hub below and if you look you see this big gap over here that's to allow the springs to move so your transmission is actually driven through these Springs not the hub and the clutch by itself the springs do the driving and that's what gives you your dampening effect so on the front side of the disc or the flywheel side you can see it's your Springs your your dampening Springs and you can see the hub over here but this hub is actually floating in this area over here it's not actually directly attached to it sexually can revolve inside of this so what happens is if you look at these rivets again you've got this side riveted directly to this front side holding the springs and this hub is floating in the center and and you can see the hub here it's got this little room over here so the springs can move when you get some sort of vibration or harmonics but it's actually just driven by the springs this goes back on the transmission like this so here we have this clutch disc attached to the transmission and you can see basically that the transmission is spinning with the disc but keep in mind powers going from this disc here which would be squashed between the flywheel and the and the pressure plate and through the springs into the hub and to the transmission if you notice on this section over here you could see this little wavy piece of metal here this is a both sides of the lining of riveted to it and it's called a Marcel what happens with the Marcel is it acts as a little cushion anytime the clutch is compressed you can see this action over here it actually absorbs some of the shock and gives a little bit more clean up apply so it doesn't give you a little bit chattering there's many different designs like this and many different concepts the way these things work but basically it's the same the same thing it's the object of it is to absorb some of the shock load and give a smoother apply some of the racing just don't even have this and they don't even have Springs in here everything is solid and locked direct and that's great for racing but it gives you a very harsh apply on the street and will also give you a really tiring effects sometimes if anything is not exactly dialed in okay here's a question if I ground all the rivets off that holds the retaining plate in place so you could see how the hub actually is you know set up so this is the spring plate this plate is riveted with these rivets down to the main drive plate here and you can see the hub simply comes off like this and as these Springs in it so the Springs actually on the edges these the ledges on each side of the spring like this these edges here are driven by these little sections over here so the disc is actually driving the hub by the springs so if I pop these Springs out okay and I put this hub back in here the back like this you can see the action how it works without the springs so what happens is this thing is driving it like this now when the springs bottom out you have these rivets that it goes against but ideally if the spring should never allow it to smack against the rivets so you could see the action how it works when you use lightweight fly wheels a lot of times the inertia of a heavy wheel keeps the springs loaded and what happened this is by the next time they see a metal cell in the fires if there's not enough inertia this thing goes back like this so you can get rattles in the gearbox because the lightweight flywheel doesn't allow these Springs to keep tension all the time through the next firing cycle the more cylinders you have the less the harmonics will be but for example a 4-cylinder engine means that it fires basically twice every revolution and that may not be enough inertia with a lightweight wheel to keep these Springs loaded so that's why a lot of times when you have lightweight flywheel you'll get rattles in the gearbox is because these Springs are making this hub actually rattled back and forth it's like somebody taking the input shaft in the jiggling a desert intern so that's how the inside works on the disc easiest way to measure for proper clutch release is the air gap and people ask me what is air gap air gap is basically a measurement in between the disc and the flywheel or the disc and the pressure plate sometimes if you can you know they have things like feeler gauges that you can fit underneath here and your gap so what happens is a lot of people shoot for 4045 thousandths of an inch gap 25 thousandths of an inch you divide it by to roughly 20,000 per size to allow for air in between these two pieces so a lot of Bell housings people used to cut holes in the Bell housings to allow air gap measurement using a flat feeler gauge and you can put the gauge through the hole and measure your clearance between the disc and the flywheel or the disc in the pressure plate it doesn't matter what side you can grab it from you just want to shoot for around 40 thousands this is a perfect example of what I was talking about if you want to set up have a clutch would out any Springs this is a bare-bones clutch this this is actually out of a 1958 Ferrari Berlinetta you can see the hub it's completely riveted to the drive plate and the lining is riveted to the drive plate on both sides but the drive plate still has that little spring cushion actually going on to at least dampen some of the apply but again this baby's lock solid so you get a very harsh engagement with the clutch because there's no springs driving it so again 19:58 technology this is how it was on the old Ferraris you can see the way they lighten this too because they were concerned about rotating mass really light peace but never let go alright another note this is a another Ferrari clutch that I've worked on same concept that I told you about all these drive springs floating hub in the middle okay and you can see here that it's worn you can see the way the lining has worn down and it's actually cut into the rivets and actually this is typical of what happens when a clutch actually slips you can see where the light is moving you can see the lining worn it's all worn out and stuff like that but this here is an a really old lever clutch three-finger clutch and people call it you see you got the springs inside we can see these levers pull the pressure plate away from the engine and the springs keep the plate the plate loaded against the engine very simple operation and these levers are a little bit adjustable they have a little bolts in here that you can move into just things or whatever but it's pretty old technology this is what was you and again 1958 Ferraris but tried-and-true method work work flawlessly and they never broke this is pretty messed up anyway I hope you really enjoyed this video I hope it gave you some insight into how clutches work please subscribe to my channel thanks for watching don't go fast

Channel: GearBoxVideo

Views: 2,130,207

Rating: 4.8082085 out of 5

Keywords: diaphram clutch, how do clutches work, clutch adjustment, manual transmission, Clutch, Automotive Clutches, Centerforce Clutches, Centerforce Flywheels, How Centerforce clutches work, 3 finger clutch, diagnosing clutch problems, corvette clutches, chevy clutches, manual transmission clutch operation, Mustang clutch, Camaro Clutch, Rockcrusher, how to rebuild, Hays clutch, How to auto repair, automotive education, cars, learn how a clutch works in 5 minutes

Id: 9UmrCl2nLKM

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 28 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/GlamRockDave]

Every time I see one of these I'm always compelled to go back and watch this classic demonstration of an open differential.

[u/Robert_Abooey]

Magic, got it.

[u/quitte]

3 minutes in this guy is telling me that the disk is moving freely from the flywheel when you are in neutral. I wouldn't rely on whatever he's telling in the next 13 minutes.

Engineering Explained actually knows what he's talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNUfMV2f_eo

[u/IloveblinkingIdo]

Already know how a clutch works but want to see someone explain it as fast and impatiently as possible? Take a look. Everyone else who zoned out when he said "..dis happins to be a diaphraaaam klutcha from sinnerfawce where dey have deez extra.." this 4 year old ELI5 does a much better job: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x8gei/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_a_clutch_in_a_manual/

[u/Rapturos]

I think I'd have an easier time understanding Mandarin Chinese

[u/Rapturos]

"This is a clutch," ^{Okay I'm following you...}

"and this here is the input differenciating axis flywheel plate absorber..." ^{..... uhhh}

[u/arsi17]

Thanks...

[u/travisimo]

I'm replacing the clutch in my subaru this month... in my driveway... Thanks for this!

[u/PlaylisterBot]

Media (autoplaylist)	Comment
Want to know how a clutch works? Watch this video	Imacad
this classic demonstration of an open differential	GlamRockDave
clutch	mrboxley
This one is better	YahBas
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