steel vs bronze floaters. How does bronze effect clutch tuneup?

Been using steel floaters I have some bronze coated floaters. How will this change effe
ct the setup. It is a glide clutch

 

Honestly, all the feedback I've had tells me it's just another floater. I've had guys tell me they are super aggressive. I've had others tell me they didn't notice a difference. Personal experience tells me they are more aggressive, especially when the clutch is still relatively cold early in the run. That being said, glide clutches typically warm up faster than pedal clutches do. I would try for starters with maybe 10% less weight.

 

I will try that,
thanks

 

Did you ever try it? How did it work out?

 

First time i saw bronze floters was when Frank was walking around his pit ariea
with them in his hands, That said if you ask me i would
say they are no differant than the rest, cuz if they worked he sure as hell wouldent be showing them to any one.

 

They are great if your not slipping the clutch a lot to get the car to go down the track. When i grind them after 4-5 runs it takes about .002-.004 to get them flat also they are easier on the clutch disks than a steel floater with cutter grooves. down side is they are 350.00 each but if they are not abused you can get a bunch of laps out of them

 

How do you hold them to grind them, are they magnetic? Do you get better life out of the friction discs as well? How quick/fast have you been? Thanks.

 

they are magnetic so i can use a surface grinder or let them rest on the steel platform on my clutch grinder it was on a 2400 hp turbo SBC switching to a 3000 plus 481X will use the same set up also have TMT coated flywheel and pressure ring i can go the whole year with out surfacing them and it take a light dusting with a diamond wheel to clean up using timing control on less than perfect tracks means i can quickly lock up the clutch and not kill it will too much slip.its a 3 disk 10'' AFT i get .002 -.003 wear per run

 

With TMT you better not slip it much or you smoke it. When you smoke TMT, you may as well have ball bearings for clutch discs, not to mention the cost!

 

How much would be too much slippage and what is TMT?

 

I keep mine fairly locked up i have drove thru the clutch a few times it has not effected the TMT just have the common heat checks.TMT is a special aerospace high temp ultra hard coating kind of like carbide and diamond its about 350.00 a surface to put on but i am on year 3 and can dust grind it a few more times its only about .010 to .015 thick and has to be ground with a diamond wheel lol i got my clutch in 2002 i think and this is the 3 rd set of TMT facings i have had

 

Who does the TMT coatings? Are you grinding much on the hat and flywheel to get it back true? Is the TMT coating limited to a certain type of base material? Have you considered running this coating on your floaters? Thanks for all the info.

 

TMT Coating is a High Velocity semi-ceramic spray coating about .006-.010" thick sprayed onto the steel/friction surface. The company is TMT Research out of California. It is hard HARD stuff. Pro Stock and Comp guys have been running it for years in close geared applications. What it does for them is similar to bronze without the added effects of aggression. The surface stays a more consistent texture and stays pretty flat over time so they can run the flywheel, floaters and pressure plate quite some time before have to grind. 15-ish laps typically on floaters before grind, 30 or so on flywheel and pressure plate in Pro Stock, typically further in comp cars.

The baby clutch cars usually don't slip much more than .5-.7 in from the hit in low gear and break a little loose at the shifts. If they stick a burnout, or slip much harder than that, the coating gets fried, never wants to lock up and either needs to be ground if you have enough coating left on it or completely replace the coating. Total costs for their baby clutches to get recoated including shipping to and from TMT is usually in the $1800 range because it usually includes next day freight charges..

Never tried it on anything that really needs to slip the clutch because of this. We can usually go plenty of passes on the steel flywheel and pressure plate surfaces on the big clutches when the right steel is used. I know a few people have tried with roots/nitrous/mountain motor cars with bigger clutches. Haven't heard of anyone really singing it's praises in the bigger cars. Personally, I just never saw a cost benefit vs. performance gain in the bigger stuff because to coat a 10" or 11" surface is twice the cost of the 6.25". Lets say you've got four 10" floaters you want to try it on. Probably $50-65 a piece in the steel floater alone and you have them shipped straight to TMT. Just coating with the finish grind from TMT, which is usually flatter than you could ever do yourself, the 4 floaters is going to be over $1200, $1600 if you get them double coated (.010"-.015" instead of the .006"-.010"). Best case you're $1400 into 4 floaters for single coating and you haven't shipped them back to you yet. We'll call it $1450.

Everything goes perfectly and you get 20 laps out of each set(40 total) in a 3 disc.. $36.25/lap in floaters absolute best case. Lets say you fry one set(kill the coating and warp the floater more than there is coating so it can't grind out) on the first lap and the other set goes perfectly.. You're now at $70/lap.

Now lets say you use steel for the same 40 laps, averaging 4 laps a floater. 10 floaters @ $65 = $650 + $15/lap to grind if you pay someone. $1250/40 laps = $31.25/lap absolute worst case.. Most blown alky/A-fuel teams who are setup to grind on their own somehow are probably more in the ballpark of $10/lap total using steel floaters. And you can terrorize a steel floater all you want.. If you are being kind as kind to your steel as you would have to be with TMT, you would get more laps out of them.

Bronze has similar benefits of the TMT, slightly less or similar cost, only you can be a little harder on bronze without sacrificing the friction properties. You can still warp the steel cores being really rough on them which will shorten the life.

 

Thanks for that Justin !