I am considering filing a lawsuit, but would like some feedback on what everyone thinks could have caused this problem since the Nissan dealership is pointing fingers and seems very frantic. A little back round information first, Was in the Marines, didn't really drive the car much after the installation of the new ACT clutch, was advised by the mechanic who installed the clutch that the catch was because of the torque the clutch could handle and things would smoothen out. Well, they reassured me a few times that my clutch was good and that everything was sound. Just recently my car shut off after pushing in the clutch to roll up to my parking spot, a loud squealing noise started and the clutch smelled like it was burning bad. happened twice and instantly went to drop it off at the dealership, on my way the squealing continued and I was forced to run a few red lights because my car kept shutting off when I would be idle. Well, about 1 mile from the dealership my clutch completely detached and car died on a bridge coming from a highway. Took awhile for me to get it to start and ride it out to the dealership. There is an investigation going on but in total I only put 9,332 miles on this clutch and it looks like this :

Any advice would help.

ACT

 

From the pictures, I'd say the throwout bearing seized. I suspect the spinning fingers of the diaphragm spring on the pressure plate would have spun on the bearing housing's outer surface, generating a lot of heat and shaving away a little material. The color transition on the diaphragm spring supports that. After a while the heat and stress on the bearing caused catastrophic failure and diaphragm spring buckled, shown with in the pic with the bent ends; allowing the dead throwout bearing to finally come apart. Amazing; the stress these components went through must have been immense.

 

Following up, I'm seeing there's wear marks on the throwout bearing sleeve, which is very odd; it implies the entire throwout bearing was spinning on the throwout bearing sleeve. Perhaps during the initial heating up period and shut down, the clutch diaphragm spring friction welded itself to the throwout bearing? Would you be able to take another closer shot of the actual ball bearing? I see wear on the bearing raceway, and I'd like to see if there are flatspots and how the actually ball bearings wore. Just spit-balling failure modes folks.

 

Did your mechanic change the throwout bearing? That's odd to see one fail with such low mileage.

 

I haven't had a chance to upload the new bearing photo's, but yes, went the OEM clutch was replaced, it would fully replaced with the ACT equivalent.

 

Here they are: