Adam have you been able to grab a pic of the DF kit that was recently bought?
A little background of what I am trying to accomplish here. There are a few performance kits available. We all know the SPEC ones, and we have had some issues with it, pedal stiff, on/off, hard to modulate with undersized disc springs leading to chatter. Bill at SCP still sells these and has promised that a combination complaints and input has led to improvements on their units. That’s great and all and seems they build them mixing and matching components. I am still not sold on the brand. Centerforce had let me down down several times, 3 blown discs two on the Centerforce II 11.5” and one on the dual friction necessarily in the pressure plate, but more so on the disc, the luk pressure plate on the centerforce II kit never slipped and had enough clamping force when I was mild modded. I moved on to the Dual Friction when I bolted an auto rotor, and did make a few passes on slicks with this clutch. But eventually another exploding disc happened, on the street. Another DF disc and I was back to business, at the same time I went back to 3.08s from 3.27 the more successful gear at the track. The car is making more power however and 3.08 would put more stress on the clutch, large heavy wheels also aggravates the situation, the DF gave up during a street show off when I shifted into second with the line locks on. I’m simply jaded, and I’m sure it’s probably a combination of a perfect storm, maybe break in issues, reusing of some components, abuse etc. Still I am suspect that the pressure plate on the kits being sold after some period or maybe during a specific period are not the heavy duty PP, instead some other source that possible are stock in terms of holding strength, disregard the innovative centerforce weights for a minute. Given the market for the Mazda M5R2 and M5OD slowly dwindling down, I wonder if Centerforce are softening, coupling their kits with a sub par holding pressure plate, unlike the early days where a heavy duty higher clamping pressure plate was being used, tentatively sourced from luk. I mean the days of 20 high HP manual SCs ripping down the track on slicks are behind us, and I’m sure the original Kits with the HD PP probably did get the job done way beyond the expectations of most owners. Note: I don’t have any evidence of the above statement, other than coming up with conclusions based on my experience and investigation from pics and part number searches. So
I gave up on Centerforce. And went with a RAM kit made for our cars, and I have ran it for some time now, but there was a situation or two where I manage to make it slip and while I enjoy the light pedal feel, the kit simply came with a stock like pressure plate found on stock replacement kits, not only that but it appears it was mismatched as the PP surface area seems more suitable to an 11.5” disk and not the 11” dual friction disk it came with. Alot if the remaining aftermarket performance kits (SPEC aside) available are simply stock pressure plates with some upgrades to the disc to make it higher performance.
