On my way in to work this evening I heard a noise that I thought was coming from the car next to me. A couple of start/stops later I realized the noise I heard had come from my truck. The throwout bearing started dying. I was still about 25 miles from work. It was an interesting drive for sure. Got a little nervous when traffic would come to a complete stop but the truck would eventually get going. Hopefully I can get it home in the morning. As mentioned in the thread title, the clutch is original to the truck and has 273K miles on it. The biggest recommendation seems to be to scrap the factory OEM dual mass and go with a single disk. The second recommendation seems to be to go with an organic/organic HD. I've been waiting for the clutch to die for some time so I could do some minor upgrades (tuner, little bigger injectors after the tuner starts destroying the factory ones). So I dont think I would need a clutch capacity in excess of 400ish horsepower. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.

 

go with a south bend or valair. since you plan on getting some performance upgrades in the future, get a clutch now that will be able to handle it. i would get one rated for at least 450hp. that way you arent pushing the clutch to the limit before it slips. a little buffer is a good ideal to have so know your clutch will be able to hold the power. if you plan on making more power in the future, then get a clutch that will hold even more power.

 

our trucks are at 425 hp and a 1,000 ftlb torque we tow very heavy, peter at southbend assembles us a conofe with a special center because of our heavy exhaust brake use, i should have started out with a dual disc 3250. as crf450 stated get one that will handle the power. we learned a lot on injectors because of our troubles with our 03's then the 06's came along with the third pulse and we went to 50 hp nozzles for mpg, if you will add a 2 micron filter by the fuel tank the injectors will last a very long time, do not get bigger injectors, smarty jr and efi live remove the third injection event and will take you to 425-450 hp and 900 ftlbs torque and the stock nozzles with the finer spray pattern will give the best mpg, when we first started out removing the third pulse was not available, your truck has injectors with a design flaw in the solenoid, if one ever fails, just replace the solenoid, you do not need to remove the injector to do it

 

Carl has good advice with reference to the injectors. I put that filtration on my truck when the number 5 injector went out and only replaced that one and have not had an issue with the others. It has been 5 years since that happened.

As for the clutch. I took a different route. Just had to replace my original (which after removing my stock one which was a LUK) decided to install a LUK single mass flywheel kit. It came with an organic disk on one side and ceramic on the other. I went with LUK again because the original was almost new and the truck had 140k miles on the stock one. The reason I changed it out, was that the release bearing was making a real bad noise. This new clutch has almost 7k miles on it and I realy enjoy it. It does not have any slip. It just hooks right off the go. Had 12k pounds hooked up and went up a 6% grade hill and hit the pedal to see if it slipped and nothing, it just kept on climbing. There is only one thing to get used to, when you have a load, it bucks when reversing. You have to find the right pedal level to compensate for that. They say that is the ceramic disc doing that. It does not bug me, it just gets some getting used to.

 

even southbend used LuK centers and metal and you can save some money with the LuK. we added the no spin hubs to give us a second lower 2wd reverse and two more forward low gears,

 

The SBC OKHD would work fine. You will have to go with a thicker fluid like Amsoil 75-90 MTG to suppress the gear rollover racket losing the DMF. That's by far the record on the OEM clutch that i've read about and injectors.

 

Well my shop and I decided to go with the Valeo. Same clutch he put in his 06. The other determining factor was economics. $2000ish for the SB vs $1500ish for the Valeo. And I did ask about the oil. I told them Mercedes recommends a 70-90 vs ATF recommended by Chrysler for the same tranny.

 

To be honest, I really don't pull large loads like most of the folks on this board. It's my daily driver. If it wasn't for stop and go rush hour traffic, it may still be alive since it was the throw-out bearing that failed. I'm not complaining though. I got my monies worth and then some..

 

The Valeo will work fine with a stock truck. Mine just couldn't hold the camper weight and Smarty. Very smooth clutch. I had one before the SBC.

 

i think chrysler says that because its thats what they put in it. i think they put aft in the g56 because its cheaper then mobil delvac 50, which is what mercedes says to put in the tranny and its a mercedes tranny. so i use the delvac 50 with 1qt over.

 

We just stayed with the ATF. My shop made the point that its got almost 300K miles and no issues. BTW, the new clutch is not as noisy as I thought it was going to be. Not much worse than the OEM clutch. It is buttery smooth though..

 

The clutch action should be silent. It's the trans that'll usually make some gear noise putting through a parking lot or neighborhood.
However,I drove a G-56 w/237K on it a few months ago. It had a smf conversion and was a quiet as with the stock clutch.