Strange clutch behavior with new clutch
 

Blew up (yes, literally) my clutch a bit ago and had a new one installed. It was pretty cheap, can’t remember exactly what it was. The shop that put it in was a racing shop and have worked on RX8s since the early 2010s.

The new clutch feels much lighter sprung than the OEM one and above 8500rpm the pedal basically sticks to the floor. I have brake fluid in my reservoir and I adjusted the pedal. Is this an artifact of the cheap clutch or something worse?

It sounds like a warranty question on the parts and labour. Have you talked to the shop about it? If the pedal is down, either your clutch isn't fully engaged, which is bad, or it's never fully disengaged...which is worse. I wouldn't drive it too long without someone looking into it.

I don’t believe it isn’t fully disengaging or else I believe I’d feel it in the trans while shifting. I also don’t feel like the clutch is slipping

I had a similar problem. The term Charles used was 'Stack Height'. Basically the pressure plate was not far enough away from the flywheel and the weights that help pressure at high speed are on the wrong side of the pivot. the release the cultch. All I remember was that adding some precision spacers (washers from lowes) between the pressure plate and flywheel solved the problem.

The down side is that you need to pull the trans to solve the problem. I did my best to work it through the starter hole and could not make it work.

This Thread https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-aft...gh-rpm-236046/ search is your friend.

That… sucks. What sucks more is that I’m leaving for college soon so there’s no way I’ll be able to get it back into a shop in time. Do you think I could invoke a warranty on parts/labor for this? Obviously the terms for the individual shop would matter but to me it seems like a labor issue.

Is driving it in this state detrimental to any components or should I be fine for now?

You paid for a working clutch and you received a not working clutch so yeah I'd say this is a warranty issue. Parts and labour, if the labour isn't done right and destroys parts, that's still not really your problem as the customer.This should be a routine procedure that any shop should be able to get right, so I don't see a great reason for them to argue otherwise. How long has it been?

I’ve driven it for maybe 3 days? Went on vacation immediately after I got it from the shop so it’s been a little over a week now