Since many of you find these sort of things interesting I thought I would stick up some photos and detail of what can happen if you take the cheap route when changing your clutch and don't change out the dual mass flywheel at the same time.
The Mini has a DMF therefore although this post is based on my Porsche Boxster it is still relevant and I urge you all to pay close attention !
In this instance a £300 ish part resulted in £15,000 of engine damage. Luckily as you all know I like to get my hands dirty so I managed to cap the repair costs to around £1000 and a couple of weekends of my time as well as some workshop time on my work lunch breaks to make a few special tools I needed to complete the engine build.
I will start by listing the detail of the destruction caused and follow up with the photos :)
The process of self destruction was as follows:
1) Dual mass flywheel failed causing imbalance in the end of the crank.
2) Last main beaing began to wear excessively causing more imbalance and movement in end of crank.
3) Imbalance at high RPM caused crank flex leading to the flywheel/clutch assembly contacting the gearbox bellhousing.
4) Bellhousing contact "kinked" the end of the crankshaft (forces in excess of 1800 Nm acting upon the end of the crank)
5) Clutch was damaged and started to slip
6) Previous Owner took car to garage regarding the clutch issue and strange vibrations at certain RPM
7) Garage incorrectly renewed the flywheel which was found to be faulty and replaced the clutch but DID NOT check for damage to the crankshaft
8) Car ran not too bad for 6 months being driven normally but due to the now kinked crank the bearing wear in the last main bearing got worse and worse.
9) Eventually the main bearing nearest the flywheel failed completely due to the huge forces acting upon it through crank imbalance and the next in bearing began to wear.
10) The now huge amounts of crank movement damaged the new DMF and was allowing the assembly to wiggle about contacting parts of the gearbox bellhousing again whilst all the time wearing the end and second main bearings more and more to the point of complete destruction.
Photos and a video in the link below :)
http://s307.photobucket.com/user/Dri...oken%20Boxster
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