Short Version: Thought the car was displaying signs of crank walk so parted out the performance parts. Turns out, she's ok.
Long Version:
I had a 500+whp GTI stock internals with an E85 tuned Vortex XL and DKM stage 3 clutch. All was well in the world for a long time, car was fast, loved the way it looked... life was great. Then one day I started noticing oily looking drops on my driveway. Figured i would investigate when it was a warm day because it was just a few drops and I wasn't overly concerned. After a few days the drops and puddle got bigger and was coming from the weep hole where a rear main seal leak would be. When I did my clutch i also replaced the rear main seal with an iAbed one because why not I'm doing all this work might as well check that box at the same time.
So since i changed the RMS a year ago i was kindof pissed that there could be an issue with it already but hey maybe user install error so i contacted the owner of iAbed. He stated it was rare for the RMS to fail after over a year and the only time he see's this happen is with crank walk, if it was going to fail or had a bad install you would have seen the leak earlier. I didn't have any signs of crankwalk that i could pinpoint so thought nothing of it and ordered just the seal and was going to drop the tranny and redo the seal.
Then a few days later while driving home, my clutch pedal stuck to the floor and i had to physically pull it up by hand to get it back in place. With what iAbed said fresh in my head and now this, i thought the worst. I have a 500hp stock engine with a dkm stage 3 clutch, of course it was crank walk... what else could it be.
I panicked, not wanting to completely torpedo the engine i stopped driving it. Figured i guess its time to part everything out and get what i can for it. Went through removing everything i could before i got to the transmission. Not wanting to see the worst and not wanting to do the clutch in my driveway again by myself because it was kindof a bitch the first time.
Finally got around to dropping the transmission and what did i see..... No oil or leak around the Rear Main Seal at all. How can this be? There is residue all around the bottom of the inside. Look over to the tranmission side and the ALL METAL THROW OUT BEARING was leaking. Never crossed my mind that that would be the culprit because its all metal and doesnt have the middle plastic point that could leak. My heart sank... this was fixable if indeed that was the only issue. I already parted out alot of parts so there was no going back.
Finally have the car mostly reassembled but still removing and replacing stock parts but she drives and runs great. One thing to note, i had the DIY TTRS in my car for a long time before the DKM and havign a stock clutch back in the car is crazy. It's so light i question whether it is installed correctly! But it works.
With that being said, while all this was going down i put in an order for a Tesla Model 3 LR AWD due to the current car market's ridiculous prices and lack of available inventory on cars i actually want to buy. I am joining the dark side. Test driving the car seems plenty fast and they have a performance boost option that gets you into 0-60 around 3.7seconds, some reporting faster so that should be plenty good for me. I didnt get the Performance because it was hard to justify the cost and the car was already expensive enough.
I will still be around here cleaning up spam posts but i think eventually the inevitable will happen where one day you just wont see me anymore unless you PM me or ill be on sparsely. I've had alot of fun interacting with you guys and learning a bunch. Hell i even met @PowerDemon the other weekend for some drinks when he came down from a few hours away to pick up my PM4. This has been one of the best car communities i have been around and hope you guys keep it going. thanks all
Long Version:
I had a 500+whp GTI stock internals with an E85 tuned Vortex XL and DKM stage 3 clutch. All was well in the world for a long time, car was fast, loved the way it looked... life was great. Then one day I started noticing oily looking drops on my driveway. Figured i would investigate when it was a warm day because it was just a few drops and I wasn't overly concerned. After a few days the drops and puddle got bigger and was coming from the weep hole where a rear main seal leak would be. When I did my clutch i also replaced the rear main seal with an iAbed one because why not I'm doing all this work might as well check that box at the same time.
So since i changed the RMS a year ago i was kindof pissed that there could be an issue with it already but hey maybe user install error so i contacted the owner of iAbed. He stated it was rare for the RMS to fail after over a year and the only time he see's this happen is with crank walk, if it was going to fail or had a bad install you would have seen the leak earlier. I didn't have any signs of crankwalk that i could pinpoint so thought nothing of it and ordered just the seal and was going to drop the tranny and redo the seal.
Then a few days later while driving home, my clutch pedal stuck to the floor and i had to physically pull it up by hand to get it back in place. With what iAbed said fresh in my head and now this, i thought the worst. I have a 500hp stock engine with a dkm stage 3 clutch, of course it was crank walk... what else could it be.
I panicked, not wanting to completely torpedo the engine i stopped driving it. Figured i guess its time to part everything out and get what i can for it. Went through removing everything i could before i got to the transmission. Not wanting to see the worst and not wanting to do the clutch in my driveway again by myself because it was kindof a bitch the first time.
Finally got around to dropping the transmission and what did i see..... No oil or leak around the Rear Main Seal at all. How can this be? There is residue all around the bottom of the inside. Look over to the tranmission side and the ALL METAL THROW OUT BEARING was leaking. Never crossed my mind that that would be the culprit because its all metal and doesnt have the middle plastic point that could leak. My heart sank... this was fixable if indeed that was the only issue. I already parted out alot of parts so there was no going back.
Finally have the car mostly reassembled but still removing and replacing stock parts but she drives and runs great. One thing to note, i had the DIY TTRS in my car for a long time before the DKM and havign a stock clutch back in the car is crazy. It's so light i question whether it is installed correctly! But it works.
With that being said, while all this was going down i put in an order for a Tesla Model 3 LR AWD due to the current car market's ridiculous prices and lack of available inventory on cars i actually want to buy. I am joining the dark side. Test driving the car seems plenty fast and they have a performance boost option that gets you into 0-60 around 3.7seconds, some reporting faster so that should be plenty good for me. I didnt get the Performance because it was hard to justify the cost and the car was already expensive enough.
I will still be around here cleaning up spam posts but i think eventually the inevitable will happen where one day you just wont see me anymore unless you PM me or ill be on sparsely. I've had alot of fun interacting with you guys and learning a bunch. Hell i even met @PowerDemon the other weekend for some drinks when he came down from a few hours away to pick up my PM4. This has been one of the best car communities i have been around and hope you guys keep it going. thanks all
