A busy year ahead for Xtreme Clutch with their new twin plate organic clutch kits.
One of the most difficult aspects of designing any clutch kit upgrade is creating a good balance between driveability on the street and performance in high horsepower vehicles. High horsepower street vehicles are often only left with a choice of motorsport style clutch kits that are difficult to modulate. With this in mind, the performance and racing division of Australian Clutch Services, Xtreme Clutch, has been developing their range of twin plate organic clutch kits which are designed primarily for high horsepower vehicles that are still being driven on the street.
“We recognised early on that as the power levels of tuned street vehicles continued to climb, there were limited options available to the vehicle owners for performance clutch kits that could handle exceptionally high horsepower but also retain driveability on the street,” explains ACS Managing Director, Brenton Jordan.
Organic material is designed for street applications and is the most commonly used clutch disc friction material in standard vehicles. The material is designed to allow modulation of the clutch pedal meaning that any driver can take off from a set of lights or on a hill with ease.
Most multi-plate clutch kits of the past have been developed with ceramic friction materials as they are more commonly used in motorsport style applications which require a higher heat capacity. A twin plate organic clutch offers significantly increased driveability compared to the ceramic and carbon versions. The ceramic and carbon options do offer a much higher heat capacity for vehicles that are being used on the track, but the organic material means that those driving very high horsepower vehicles on the street can now enjoy similar levels of driveability to a single plate performance clutch.
Xtreme Clutch has been busy producing these twin plate organic kits to suit a wide variety of applications including the new model Ford Mustang, Ford Focus RS and VW Golf GTI Mk7. They have also recently launched a new range of performance upgrade kits, including a 230mm twin plate organic, to suit the Honda Civic Type-R FK8 at SEMA in Las Vegas.
“One of our most exciting new additions is the twin plate organic kit for the Honda Civic Type-R FK8 which we launched at the SEMA show in Las Vegas at the end of last year. We are expecting this vehicle to be an exceptional platform for development and we have already seen great interest in our range of single and multi-plate upgrades for the vehicle.”
The twin plate organic is especially popular in local V8 performance vehicles such as the SS Commodore and the XR8 Falcon. These vehicles have exceptionally high horsepower and torque after modification and often require a multi-plate clutch to handle the increases in engine performance. For these applications, a 270mm twin plate clutch has been developed that offers organic discs and a strap driven pressure plate to reduce the “twin plate rattle” that is commonly heard when the clutch pedal is depressed on multi-plate clutches with floating discs. Rated to around 1300 Nm of torque depending on the application, these kits suit a wide variety of vehicles with high performance levels.