clutch
 

So I was up at Dartmouth yesterday recruiting. I picked up one of the associates from work in the M3 at about 6:30 in the morning and we jumped on 93 to NH. Everything was great until I got to campus and the clutch stopped working right. As I was pulling away from a stop sign, there was a little banging noise and the clutch pedal got squishy. From that point on, it took a LOT of gas to get going after stopping. I managed to limp to the parking garage on campus.

An email to my mechanic (and a text to Nick, of course) pointed to an exploded release bearing. "I was expecting this - it's been making noise for a while," was the response from my mechanic.

I briefly considered trying to drive back to Boston last night, but getting caught on the side of a busy highway at night with potentially no cellular coverage didn't seem like a good time. I had it towed the 135 miles, and got to meet a really nice flatbed truck driver named Kevin. We bonded over the three hour trip.

Anyway, anyone have any recommendations on what sort of clutch to put in? Anything else I should do while the transmission is dropped?

I don't know anything about e36 clutches, but I'd stick with OE unless you are okay with "quirks" from aftermarket parts.

Yeah, the answer is stay stock unless you actually are looking to change something.

Cool, thanks to both of you.

Didnt JST or TD go with the light flywheel on their E36 and hated all the noise it made?

I think TD got the lightweight flywheel. I never changed my clutch. I recall it making noise, but don't think it was THAT bad.

I did the LTW flywheel (which requires a different OE clutch - E34 M5 maybe). The noise is increased but well worth it for the huge change in rev-ability. You could really blip the throttle once. I never regretted that mod.

And it only rattled in neutral with the clutch out. So if you ever felt self-conscious about the noise, just press in the clutch. I don't recall it being noticeably louder while underway. Granted that M3 was kind of noisy compared to most cars.

The problem with the UUC flywheel is that build quality is pretty dubious.

I drove your car right before you got rid of it and it felt fine to me. I don't recall noticing much of a difference in ability to throttle blip, but I don't have any problem blipping the throttle in my car as it is.

That's the transmission. It's the lay shaft bearing. A rebuilt/new transmission doesn't rattle.