UMW LWFW and Clutch Review (I no longer hate LWFW's)
 

Hey guys,

I thought I would do a formal review of my new clutch setup. So it's slightly unclear what I used to have in the car. The mechanic said it was the same setup, but I'm not sure I believe him. I think that my old setup was a GT3 clutch with the fibertough material and some kind of LWFW.

My beef with it was that it grabbed so agressively, without paying close attention and lacking the weight of a dual mass FW, the car would stall because it engaged so quickly. I tended to over-rev far too often. On top of that it had a TON of gear lash when accelerating below like 2300 RPM.

So, I spoke with Kevin at UMW about what I wanted - a clutch with room to grow into like 600hp or so if necessary, but daily driveablility.

He strongly recommended against the fiber tough option but said I can't do much drag racing (not an issue).

So 2100 bucks later, he sent me a new clutch a flywheel. Got it installed which took forever, and I've put about 500 miles on it now. I have to say that it completely changed the driving characteristics of the car. You can actually feel the engagement point now. No GT2 Slave conversion necessary. For those of you whining about the stock lack of feel, you should have tried driving my OLD setup. Phew. This is CAKE and the clutch is really light.

It feels totally stock and engages so much more smoothly than my old one. Even the tech who did the install said he was shocked how easy it was to drive given the clamping force.

The flywheel still has gear lash below 2k rpm, but my old one trained me not to drive at that low an rpm anyway. It's noisy with the AC on, but again, got used to that. So yes, your car will kind of sound like a diesel truck in the summer, but whatev.

Net Net - I think everyone needs to be realistic about what kind of driver they are and if they really need a drag strip dominating clutch or just want something that won't get toasted by a flash. For me, this clutch is exactly what I wanted to keep the car easy to drive and will support some future mods. Highly recommended.

gotta admit i have the lwfw set up and it's great .
have not put many miles on it (seldom drive the car)yet but is way better than my past dealing with UMW