It's Always the Little Things
One day at Rogue Engineering, a local customer came with his E46 M3 (less than 40k miles). He wanted us to look at a "noisy clutch" issue he was having. When pressing down on the clutch pedal, you could feel a vibration and chattering sound. With such little mileage, it would be tough to diagnose that the clutch was worn out, but it sounded more like there was a flywheel problem. Unfortunately, with most things clutch related, you don't really know until the entire transmission is taken down.
It turns out that the culprit to the clutch issue was a BROKEN clutch pivot pin. The entire head had completely broken off. When this happens, the clutch fork is not securely positioned when the clutch slave cylinder pushes on the opposite end. That's right. A $1.50 part caused the grief of over $1000 (while the transmission was down, the clutch was replaced with a RE PCS system).
To prevent this from ever happening to a RE customer again, we now offer a stainless steel clutch pivot pin (included with every RE PCS) This may be overkill to replacing a $1.50 part with a CNC'd stainless version, but we'd rather not drop the transmission to discover such a small part caused the failure of the clutch system.
Not all materials are alike! For some reason, the aftermarket seems to think that pivot pins made from bronze or brass will last much longer than plastic. It's actually NOT true. They actually wear faster than plastic! It is a pointless decision to do so as the transmission will have to come down AGAIN to replace this terrible choice.
Bronze vs. stainless.
Fits all manual transmission BMWs, including but not limited to the following:
- E82 (128, 135, 1M Coupe)
- E36 (318,325,328,M3)
- E46 (323i/ci.wagon,328i/ci,330i/ci/xi,325i/xi,M3,M3conv.)
- E90 (325i,Xi,330i/Xi,328i/Xi,335i/Xi,M3 sedan)
- E92 (328i,335, M3)
- Z3 (1.9,2.3,2.5i,2.8,3.0,Mcoupe, Mroadster)
- Z4 (2.5i,3.0i/si, MZ4)
- E34 (525i,530i, M5)
- E39 (530i,540i,528i, M5)
- E60 (525i/xi,530i/xi,545i,550i,M5)
- E64 (645ci,650i,M6 conv.)
- F10 (535, 550, M5)
- F12 (650, M6)
- F22 (228, 230, M235i, M240)
- F30 (320, 328, 335, 340)
- F32 (428, 430, 435, 440)
- F8X M3/M4
Installation notes
The OEM plastic one is a light interference fit whereas our steel one is not. During installation, adding a dab of grease to the bottom holds it in place during the spring clip and clutch fork installation.
