So, I thought I'd regale you all with short, sad, story of woe, busted knuckles and bathing in brake fluid. Yes, we're talking about clutch issues.

In the beginning, my '07 Cooper S was pretty much stock. The clutch worked fine, but always bothered me, as it made a regular knocking sound when in neutral. The dealer assured me that it was fairly normal for the dual-mass flywheels to do just that, so I wrote it off as another MINI idiosyncrasy, and dealt with it in my own way...by upgrading the stereo system. Loud music = quiet clutch.

5 years, and 60-odd thousand miles, later, the throwout bearing started squealing and the stock clutch started slipping pretty badly. As it seemed it was now time to tackle a fairly sizable repair, I thought (as a treat to myself) an upgrade was in order. There weren't a ton of options available at that time. Better stock clutches were out there, but I'd still have to listen to that dual-mass clacking. No, no, a thousand times, NO! OS Giken kits were awesome, but prohibitively expensive. A few no-name kits existed, but of questionable quality. Then I found Clutch Masters. They have several fun kits that use Sachs discs and pressure plates, combined with their own Aluminum or Steel flywheels. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

You may be asking yourself, this all sounds fairly normal, where does the misery begin? Let me continue.

I ordered their FX250 kit with the Aluminum flywheel. It was actually a very nice clutch. The flywheel has a replaceable steel insert and the quality is very good. I proceeded to rip apart the car and make the swap. Everything inside looked good, except that the throwout bearing had disintegrated and galled the stock clutch pretty bad. With this revelation, I felt better about my $1000+ purchase. Everything else inside looked pretty good. I did due diligence and replaced the rear oil seal while I was in there, and the rest of the repair went as expected. On the first few drives though, the clutch seemed to stutter and skip pretty badly. I re-bled the system several times, but it didn't get better. I thought - for sure - that I must have air in the line somewhere. I went through every posted bleeding procedure I could find, from manually pumping, to vacuum, to pressure, and combinations of all three as well. Nothing improved the problem. Crap. Is it me? Is this what a high performance clutch feels like?!!

Now, keep in mind, I've done all my own automotive work since my first car in the 80's. Can't tell you how many clutches I've replaced, but I've never had this many problems. So, logic kicked back in, and I tried to diagnose what was going on. I pulled the slave cylinder back out, compressed it, and put some mild pressure on the pedal. Squirt. WTF?! Tried it again. Squirt. Yup, the slave cylinder had a bum seal. After futilely trying to look inside the bell housing to see what was going on inside (you can't by the way), I resolved to pull it all back apart. Groan. Car torn apart - AGAIN - and lo and behold, I'm looking at an absolute mess. It seems that the seal ruptured and blew brake fluid all over my brand new, fairly expensive, clutch kit. Yay. The metal wear surfaces were heat damaged from the slipping and the organic disc was coated in fluid.

What to do now?

I had two options. Buy another clutch kit, or clean everything up as best as possible, reassemble, and hope for the best. Being on a fixed budget, and having just blown over a grand on a shiny new clutch, you can probably guess I went for the later. I cleaned everything up with a non-residue brake cleaner, baked the disc in an oven to fully dry it out, scuffed the flywheel and pressure plates to remove the glazing, and reassembled the whole mess. Of course, I had no idea if it would work until it was all back together, but since this was free labor, I figured, what the heck.

Now things get fun.

I tried a second round of bleeding, with my brand-spanking-new slave cylinder, and got...nothing. Nope, nothing worked. I went through all the bleeding techniques, again, and got nada. I even made sure to keep the pressure and vacuum bleeding under 14psi, to keep from blowing the seals, but nothing did the trick. I looked at the master cylinder as the only remaining culprit, but couldn't see any visible fluid leaks. That meant that the only thing left was an internal master cylinder leak, ie. blown seal. Sounds familiar, right?

I ordered a replacement master from my local parts store and was overjoyed to find it was made of metal, instead of the stock plastic. I have an old-fashioned aversion to plastic parts and their tendency to break at the most inopportune times. This is where I have the gods above curse whatever designer was in charge of that master cylinder assembly. I, like many others that walk this earth, do not have the hands of a three-year-old. Could it hurt you to move things around by a half an inch here and there so wrenches and fingers can get where they belong? Oh, and despite draining the reservoir completely, a small river of brake fluid will quickly rain down on your head (and bleeding knuckles) when you disconnect the master cylinder. Fun times.

So, clean clutch, new slave cylinder, new master cylinder, and lo and behold, a system that actually bleeds correctly later, and I'm out for my first real test drive. Cross your finger and hope for the best, right? Nope. Alas, that was not fated to be. I put the key in, but the car wouldn't start. Seems that lovely metal master cylinder blocks the signal to the clutch position sensor, so the car can't see that you're pushing it in. Grrrrr. I angrily snapped the sensor back onto the broken master and temporarily zip-tied the whole thing up under the dash. Ok, so now it starts, but the clutch won't grab. Really?

The parts I so diligently cleaned and reassembled were either too far gone, or had fluid soaked too deeply to be salvaged. The pedal system seems to work right, finally, but the clutch slips. I put some miles on it, hoping that the surfaces needed to mate again, or that maybe some latent residue would burn off, but that didn't happen. It slips like it was it's job to slip.

Sigh. As of today, I have now bit the final bullet. I contacted Clutch Masters and got a very nice guy named Alex (though I suppose it could have been a girl...damn you Alexes, Jamies, and Erinns of the world!). I ordered a new wear plate for the flywheel, and a new FX100 clutch kit. Why the 100 instead of the 250? I need something that will be easier in rush hour bumper to bumper traffic, and I think I was reaching a bit when I originally went with the FX250. My car is bone stock, just go with the FX100 and be done with it. They even matched the price I found online, which was extremely nice of them. I expect it should arrive in a week or so and will be replacing the clutch for, you guessed it, the third time!!!

The moral of my story for anyone replacing their clutch is this:

Pay someone else to do it!

If you are crazy enough to do it yourself to try and save money, don't. I mean, still do it yourself, by all means, but don't try and save money. You won't. When replacing the clutch replace everything. Put in new seals, guide tubes, master and slave cylinders, basically everything you can replace...don't ask, just replace it. The alternative is that you will get very, very good at dissembling your Mini Cooper, but very quickly grow a fierce and determined hatred for it as well. All remaining ownership joy you may possess will be sucked from your soul and trading it in As-Is will start to sound pretty good. I'm not through with mine yet and am hopeful that when the new kit arrives, I will be a happy camper yet again.

I certainly hope that someone out there will benefit from my trials and tribulations, in some small way. Have fun working on your car!