moombahton24

Been dealing with an intermittent drivetrain noise on my C5Z for a long time, so decided to make an effort to try to figure out what is going on. Been told it is clutch noise (Centerforce clutch), but I would like to be more certain about this.

The noise shows up when I am at a dead stop and let the clutch pedal out. When apparently the clutch pressure plate forces the clutch disk against the flywheel, that is when I here a squealing/chattering noise. So first off I set up a remote microphone underneath the bell housing and recorded the video such that I could see when I was letting the clutch out and coincide that with the noise.

Then I used a Steelman Wireless Chassis Ear kit by putting remote pickups in 4 different places. I noticed then that their is a pretty constant whine from the clutch area that I just thought was the oil return pump for my rear mounted turbos. I'm thinking it may be those weights on the Centerforce clutch fingers making a chattering noise. Anyway, I think it may really be the clutch making the noise, but if anyone has any input about other options, please let me know. I think I will just live with the noise for a while longer, but plan on changing out that clutch sometime in the future. It's not really an easy job on the Corvette, so I'm going to put it off as long as I can.

Trying out my FLIR Scout TK thermal imaging scope. Not exactly suited for this kind of job, but gives me a pretty good idea of relative temperatures while the engine has been running for a little while. First did the engine bay, then went underneath with the car up on the lift to look at the exhaust system and the turbos. Also showed the exhaust rigging I set up to draw the exhaust fumes out of the garage.

Pretty plainly shows where the most heat is located. The headers probably should be wrapped or recoated with a ceramic coating. The Jet Hot coating I originally had on them has apparently degraded over the years.

Sorry about the apparent speed and jerkiness of the thermal image video. I really didn't do that intentionally, but what you are seeing is an artifact of converting a 9 fps video stream to 30 fps, which tends to speed of the viewing more than I like, but not sure how to fix it in post processing.

I can see where I would like to get a better unit with more resolution, higher fps, and the capability of actually displaying the temperature at any selected point. But the prices of such a thermal image device that has ALL of the points I mentioned is still prohibitive to me. It's not something I could see using all that much to justify the high price.

But for now, this will do what I wanted.