Quality clutch replacement kit?

[Jivermo]

http://www.amazon.com/LuK-17-010-Clutch ... automotive

Prior to Colin's South Florida tour, I need to get new clutch parts. I found this link on the forum, and these kits are still available. Has anyone bought one of these kits? I want to get the best that is currently available, if anyone has a better suggestion/source.
1978 Westy, 2L

[sped372]

Seems awfully cheap for the parts to be any good. No direct experience though. The last time I bought clutch components the pressure plate alone was more than that... http://www.wolfsburgwest.com/cart/Detai ... 1141025EGR

[airkooledchris]

that's a great deal if it is what it says it is. I just paid $149 for a complete Luk clutch kit.
It's definitely a little nicer than the Sachs stuff.....

[kreemoweet]

For anyone who looks at that wolfsburgwest.com link above and perhaps gets interested in that clutch: I had one of those a few years ago, and it failed in less than 5,000 miles. It failed because of extreme wear on the plate at the outer ends of the three operating arms. This here is a photo of the worst of them: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_ ... _id=789798. There's another earlier post on thesamba.com showing the exact same wear, but I haven't been able to locate it. These clutches are apparently the exact same design as was used, very briefly, on some VW vehicles in the early '70's. I rather suspect they were used so briefly because some serious problems
started showing up. Perhaps Sachs got stuck with a warehouse full of these unwanted units, and eventually decided to unload them on the aftermarket. At any rate, it
seems a little disengenuous of WW to be calling them "OEM", especially since the original Fichtel&Sachs firm that supplied clutches to VW is long gone.

[Amskeptic]

The Marketing Machine still recommends replacing huge gobs of your German engineering with new crap.
Tune Up Day recommendations to replace the distributor cap and the condensor and the rotor and the spark plugs and the spark plug wires is just nonsense. No different with the clutch. There is NO NEED to replace the beautiful original BALANCED pressure plate and the beautiful original BALANCED TO THE CRANKSHAFT flywheel in 99% of the clutches I have seen.

The new stuff has been hell to balance, ask Jake Raby, the quality has been questionable, and yet people have come to assume that they must replace parts for no better reason than what, exactly?

Yes, replace a worn clutch disk, yes replace a release bearing if it is rough to turn . . .
My '73 bus was ridiculous with its 558,000 mile flywheel, it looked like a picture of Saturn's rings, but it is was smooth. The 558,000 mile pressure plate fingers were getting dangerously skinny from hundreds of thousands of miles of double-clutching, but heck, it was smooth . . .

Google "LUK vs Sachs quality" and you will see many opinions about which has better quality.
Colin

[bus71]

We recently installed a Luk clutch kit on our 71. The engine needed work so we dusted off the old 1600sp. I had ordered the Luk kit after seeing it on Rockauto while buying parts for another project. The price was good and the company seemed to be legit. It has very good fit and finish and came with a german Sachs release bearing. The disc and pressure plate are brazil. We were going for a quick swap so we installed the Luk and left the old german heavy duty clutch on the old engine. We put the new release bearing on the shelf as the old one is fine. The flywheel was sanded and cleaned up nicely. So far it works fine, very smooth operation. If anyone is interested, I will update from time to time. Our bus sees some tough forest road climbing so this should be a good test.

[Jivermo]

Yes, it would be helpful to get reports back on this. It would help our members make informed decisions when it comes time to replace these components. There is so much crap out there for our vehicles, it's great to know what the quality stuff is.