New clutch and flywheel making grinding noise and smoking

[JDR33]

So I've recently installed a new clutch with flywheel on my starlet 4efe, but upgraded to a 4efte setup with a new thrust bearing and slave cylinder. I did my research beforehand for fitment and it would be perfectly fine to continue.

Come to start it up today after dealing with another problem with the fuel pump earth. Fired up which is great, but heard a loud grinding/ chattering noise from the passenger side.

I turned the engine off and inspected the gearbox. There was some smoke emitting from that area. I tried the gears with the engine still off and all seemed okay. Clutch peddle had pressure as I bled the system. Fired it up again and had the same problem but couldn't get it into gear with it running.

Turned it off and inspected the gearbox and again some smoke was coming out.

When I installed the kit I put on the flywheel first, put new bolts on with loctite and cleaned it down with brake cleaner. There was no visible scratches.
I then cleaned the clutch disc and pressure plate and greased the spline and clutch hole where the spline goes into before installing it with the alignment tool.
The clutch disc was installed with the flatter centre part going in to the flywheel. So the other side that sticks out more was in the pressure plate (if that makes sense?)

Clearly the disc wouldn't fit the other way round. I fitted the new thrust bearing and I put the gearbox back on. Filled up the gear oil to the normal level and then bled the system. Went to fire up today and the above happened.

Did I miss something or do something wrong? Anything I can do without taking the bloody box off again? Any help would be most grateful!

[stevieturbo]

Smoke from what ?

I think it's safe to say, you have done something wrong given the symptoms you describe

As to what that is, only you can see

But clearly noises, smoke and no functional clutch.....none are good things.

[pocketspring]

Only thing to try is a kit designed for the actual car instead of going uprated and see what happens. If it happens again, then smear engineers blue over everything to see what's contacting to each other.

[JDR33]

On top of the gearbox where the fork is there is a rubber dust cover with a small square hole. That's where the smoke was escaping. It wasn't drastic but it's worrying.

[Smint]

Could the starter motor be stuck in the ring gear so being dragged round at xxxxrpm by the engine, or could the starter ring have become dislodged, removing the starter motor might reveal the problem and compared to removing the gearbox again childs play.

Once the starter is out you could turn the engine gently full revolutions by hand see if the noise is still present, could always feed an endoscope inside too if nothing is obvious.

[AW111]

I once had similar problems with my MR2.

In that instance, it turned out that the FWD gearbox didn't need a thrust spigot bearing, it was only required for the RWD boxes.

That was fitting a C160 box to a 4AGE.

Edited by AW111 on Monday 25th March 10:01

[richhead]

AW111 said:

I once had similar problems with my MR2.

In that instance, it turned out that the FWD gearbox didn't need a thrust bearing, it was only required for the RWD boxes.

That was fitting a C160 box to a 4AGE.

I think the op is confusing a thrust bearing with a release bearing tbh.

[AW111]

richhead said:

AW111 said:

I once had similar problems with my MR2.

In that instance, it turned out that the FWD gearbox didn't need a thrust bearing, it was only required for the RWD boxes.

That was fitting a C160 box to a 4AGE.

I think the op is confusing a thrust bearing with a release bearing tbh.

I've edited my post to say "spigot bearing", i.e. the one in the flywheel that takes the end of the input shaft.
In my case it prvented the geabox from sliding fully home by about 5 mm, and caused a fair bit of head scratching.

[paintman]

A very brief google suggests that the efe clutch is smaller than the efte clutch.


"And either a 4efte 212mm clutch that fits the 4efte flywheel or the uprated aftermarket 200mm 4efe corrola clutch kit that fits the factory 4efe flywheel. You will struggle to get more than 130hp on the standard 4efe clutch. The 212mm factory clutch normally see around 190hp before slipping"
www.ukstarletowners.com/topic/110295-4efe-swap-to-...

So possibly something on the new assembly is hitting something due to lack of clearance.
You need to take it all off & accurately measure the new against the old.

[GreenV8S]

paintman said:

You need to take it all off & accurately measure the new against the old.

Meh, it'll probably self clearance after a while.