I recently bought a clutch kit from them as I have heard great things about their products and used them in another car of mine with great results. I received my parts extremely quickly and was very excited to put my new clutch in. I spent most of my Easter Sunday putting in my new clutch expecting to be able to make the hour drive back to my family in time for Easter dinner. After a seemingly successful install, I started my car and pushed in the clutch pedal, only to find that half way down towards the floor I heard and felt a horrible grinding and my engine stalled out and died.
Being worried that I had somehow messed up, I started to pull the transmission out again only to find that my clutch fork that moves the throw out bearing had hit my new pressure plate and not only removed about 1/8" of material from the pressure plate, but also ground a grove into my clutch fork. I removed my clutch fork, reinstalled it in the hopes I had done it wrong the first time. After getting back in my car and starting it again, the clutch pedal became extremely stiff to operate and would not release off the floor.
This time, not only did the clutch fork get stuck in the bellhousing, the metal rod coming from my master cylinder going to my clutch pedal snapped in half, thus leaving my car completely useless and in need of a new, very expensive, master cylinder.
After inspection of my new part I had just put a grove in, I found that the new pressure plate was 1/4" thicker than the stock OEM brand that came in the car, without a doubt causing the pressure plate and clutch fork to hit one another.
I finally figured out how to move the pivot point of the clutch fork further away from the pressure plate in order to avoid it, and after spending another several hundred dollars on a new master cylinder, my clutch now works fine.
I am writing this poor and EXTREMELY unhappy review not because of the parts hitting one another, and not because I had to replace other damaged parts. I am writing this because I had decided to call Gripforce and ask them if this was an issue that they had heard of before, and if so, why on their website and also the eBay listing I bought the part from, there was absolutely NO mention that the pressure plate was thicker than the stock. I was handed off to their "technical support", which consisted of a very rude young man who found it appropriate to not only interrupt me before I was finished speaking and expressing my concern and my issues, but also went to far as to tell me that my recently fully blue printed and balanced engine had been put together improperly by my machine shop, but also "my worn out motor with several thousand miles on it has crankshaft endplay and the only way to fix this is to repair the crankshaft". Does this mean rebuild the newly rebuilt engine? No, it means that I have 0.002" of crankshaft endplay that is causing my pressure plate to hit the clutch fork. It DOES NOT mean that his product has caused any issues and that I have fully responsibility for what has happened.
This kind young man then decided to tell me that he would email me some "suggestions on how to remedy my situation". I told him that I did not want him to email me and that I would not give him my email address. I asked what remedies this email would suggest, and it was, quote "my crankshaft has 2 thousandths of endplay and that the machine shop states that replacing the trust bearing will NOT fix the issue, and they also state that cars of this vintage are known to wipe out crankshafts." I told him I'm not quite sure what that all means but it sounds contradictory and that I was extremely disappointed to with his customer service, his telling me flat out that I do not know what I am talking about when I myself have worked in the auto industry for my entire career, his rudeness, and his cockiness when telling me that he is certified to work on "automobiles" but cannot and will not tell me which kind, but just all cars.
When I had finally had enough after he put me on hold and I hung up, no more than 2 minutes later did I get an email after not giving it to him, from him stating the following:
Here is some suggestions from the manufacture to resolve the problem with your car. (understand it is not our parts that caused this issue)
"Problem: Release arm making contact with outer part of pressure plate cover stamping"
1.) Check T-Stud for being seated into the groove of the transmission correctly.
2.) Check crankshaft endplay for being out of spec. (Example: Cust had 0.060=1/16 inch of endplay, machine shop states that the cars of this vintage are bad for wiping out crankshaft and replacing thrust bearing will not repair problem.
3.) The customer can shave off 0.100 thousands off the T-Stud this will place the release arm back towards the transmission with will change the angle to compensate for crankshaft endplay problem."
I will NEVER buy from them again. read more