Installation Time
(approx) 4 Hours
Difficulty Level:
Mechanical expertise or professional installation required.
FREE 1 to 3-Day Delivery on Orders $119+ Details
$664.13 (kit)
FREE Shipping Market Price $763.99 You Save 13% ($99.86) Up to 10% off for Military & First Responders! See DetailsSaved - View your saved items
We're sorry. We couldn't save this product at this time.
or use
The Exedy Mach 500 Stage 1 Clutch will appeal to the '11 to '17 GT owners who are looking for a daily driver-friendly clutch capable of holding nearly 500 pound-feet of torque at the crank. Now, prospective buyers can look forward to a relatively pleasant driving experience with this clutch thanks to the sprung hub design, along with the organic friction material. Now, this kit will also include the matching pressure plate here and hydraulic throwout bearing for right around that low to mid $600 price point. Install, as you might imagine, guys, is going to be a little bit more involved here. So, therefore, site's going to go solid three out of three wrenches on the old difficulty meter and at least four hours or so to complete from start to finish.But let's dive a little bit deeper into the Mach 500 Stage 1 Clutch, and that 500 number is in direct relation to the torque capacity of this particular clutch. Again, up to 498 pound-feet of torque at the crank. So, with that in mind, this is certainly going to be more of a daily driver clutch, maybe a light bolt-on car out there. But certainly not going to be for the max effort, forced induction, or nitrous cars as again, this is a stage 1 offering. Now, those bigger horsepower cars would need to consider something with a little bit more firepower, such as a twin-disc or maybe something with a little bit more aggressive material for the friction disc itself.But let's break down how the Mach 500 from Exedy will hold that power, and it really starts here, guys, with the friction disc. Now, again, this clutch does utilize an organic material, which has its pros and its cons, right? Big pro here is certainly going to be the very smooth engagement and overall drivability benefits. Clutch is going to be very streetable while also at the same time, being able to hold some power but at half the price of those more expensive twin-discs. The cons, well, they're pretty obvious, right? There is an eventual limit or ceiling when it comes to just how much power that organic material can hold. And at that point, you are left with a choice, step up to a cerametallic or Kevlar material, which will be a little less forgiving on the street, or fork out the big bucks to grab a twin-disc, which is arguably going to be the best of both worlds if you can afford it. So, we know that the Mach 500 or stage 1 clutch here from Exedy will feature that single organic compound disc with that sprung hub design here in the middle, which will help reduce drivetrain shock overall. Now, this disc is going to be paired up with Exedy's matching high clamp load pressure plate, which is going to provide you guys with approximately 40% more clamping force over your factory pressure plate. And that's pretty huge and certainly worth pointing out. Last but not the least, this particular kit does include a brand new hydraulic throwout bearing, which is something I always recommend when replacing a clutch. Listen, you're in there doing the work, why skimp out on something like this when it's a pretty easy thing to replace and something that you don't want to have to drop the transmission twice for? Along with that hydraulic throwout bearing, guys, there's also a clutch alignment tool included and a brand new pilot bearing as well.Now, speaking of that install, now we want to show you guys just what's involved here, and listen, if you don't have the skills or the tools necessary to handle this job, then I'll recommend leaving this one up to your local shop. On the other hand, if you're the type who just loves to do it themself, well, then we're going to show you some of the steps necessary to get this guy in place. Now, keep in mind, this job will obviously involve things like removing your exhaust, dropping your driveshaft in order to drop the transmission itself. And that's where we're actually going to pick this install up, guys. We're going to just blow through the big steps, get to the actual removal of the stock clutch and flywheel, and show you how to install your Exedy clutch and flywheel right now. Check it out.Tools used for this installation include an impact gun, 3/8 ratchet, assorted extensions, 19-millimeter socket, 12-millimeter socket, 8-millimeter socket, some blue Loctite, pick tool, flat-head screwdriver, torque wrench, dead blow hammer, regular hammer, and a flywheel holder tool.All right, guys, so again, once you get through all the basic steps of getting to the clutch and flywheel, dropping your exhaust, removing your driveshaft, getting rid of that starter, and eventually dropping the transmission itself, you'll be left with this, your stock or aftermarket clutch depending on your situation. Now, what we need to do before we get the new Exedy stuff in place is obviously remove our factory clutch and flywheel. To do so, I have a 12-millimeter socket and a short extension. You can use whatever you like, but as long as it's 12 mill, I got a wobble, makes it a little easier. And there's nine bolts we have to remove, which we'll do right now. All right, guys, we've got our last bolt coming out here. Make sure you have a hand on the pressure plate because this will come off the dowels if you're not careful.All right. With our stock clutch and pressure plate out of the way, now we have our 19-millimeter socket on our 1/2-inch impact. We're calling out the big dogs because we're getting ready to remove our flywheel bolts up next. Now, with all of our bolts off, I have a nice little pry bar here to kind of help the flywheel come off. Obviously, it's not just going to fall off on you. You gotta get behind it a little bit and kind of work it off.All right. With our stock flywheel removed, we figured it'd be a great opportunity to throw them both on the table here, kind of do a little compare and contrast. And first things first, guys, the weight savings, right? It's pretty obvious in the shop handling both of these things. Stock flywheel's gonna weigh in around 23 to 25 pounds, Exedy about 16. So almost 10 pounds of difference, that's pretty huge when we're talking rotational mass. Again, the car's going to rev a little bit quicker, just feel a little bit more responsible, overall, and is one of the big perks about going with something like this. We did talk about briefly in the studio there these little cutouts in the center section. Again, this is going to help move that air over your clutch and that's gonna help keep things a bit cool. I always like to say a hot clutch is a slipping clutch and Exedy's one of the only manufacturers when it comes to flywheels to do something like that. I always like the point that out. You can see the extra machining here to help lose some of the weight with the chromoly steel. Certainly, some more material removed compared to your stock flywheel, which is basically just solid iron. And then we have the integrated ring gear teeth here as well. It's not a two-piece design which other manufacturers use, can be a failure point, nothing to worry about with the Exedy. So, now that you know some of the differences between the two, what do you say we show you how to get this installed?Now, before we go ahead and install our brand new Exedy flywheel, we need to remove the old factory pilot bearing and install the new one that Exedy included with the kit. In order to do so, it definitely requires some specialty tools, a bearing puller, something like that. There is a specialty pilot bearing tool or remover that we're going to use along with a slide hammer. We're going to show you how to do that right now.All right. So, for our pilot bearing tool, again, you got these two little arms here. We want to insert that in first. There we go. And now, we're going to rotate this to the right and that's going to expand those fingers. You can actually feel it grab the back of that pilot bearing. So make sure that's nice and tight. We're going to grab our slide hammer now and yank that out of there. Now, we have our slide hammer here. We're going to insert it and then thread it into place. So, with our slide hammer threaded into place, now we can just basically start hammering it out. And there it is.With our old pilot bearing out of the way, now we can just go ahead and remove that grease that's in there because we're going to regrease it and then install our new bearing. Now, we got a little dab of grease here, nothing crazy. You don't need to load it up, but just kind of work it around the edges there where the new bearing will go into place. All right. So, now that we have our new pilot bearing in hand, I threw a little bit of grease on it as well. And you really want to make sure this goes in straight. So, I got a 1-inch socket along with a tiny hammer, and basically what you want to do is get it started, use the socket, and then just basically kind of gently tap it into place. Make sure it goes in straight. And then once you got it started, go ahead and send her home. And I kinda like to tap around. You can see it almost starting. Then once you're happy with how it's going in, go ahead and call in the big guns and send her home. There is a little lip on the outside of your new bearing, so that'll tell you when to stop.Now that we're finished up with that pilot bearing, we are just about ready to throw the new Exedy flywheel in the car. But before we do, we want to make sure we get the dowels installed into the flywheel first. It's a lot easier to do with the flywheel laying flat out of the car. So, to do so I have a couple pieces of wood to use as a base. And then I also have the pressure plate as you guys can see right here, and this can really only go one way to line up all your holes. So, it might take a little while to make sure you can line up all six in this case of your holes, but you also need to make sure you can see some dowel holes, which in this case, there'll be three. I made a little mark with my paint marker here. And so, basically, we're going to take this back off, mark our dowel holes, and then tap those dowels into place.All right. So, I'm just gonna mark each hole here for my dowels. With my holes marked, I can now get the pressure plate out of the way, I can work on tapping our dowels in. So, again, this is another one of those cases just like our pilot bearing. You want to take your time, tap it in, make sure they go in straight because it's not really fun trying to get these things out if you go in a little crooked. I found having a couple pieces of wood help stabilize the flywheel itself. I like to use a little hammer in this case, a little bit more precision, and then just lightly tap it into place.So, now that we have our dowel pins in place, it's time to get the Exedy flywheel up onto the back of the engine. Now, our center section here is a little tight, so I am gonna incorporate a dead blow to get it over the pilot bearing there. But you want to really make sure that your holes are lined up here, guys. This is kind of like the pressure plate thing that we talked about earlier. It really can only go on one way. So, just eyeball it first and then make sure it's going on straight.With our flywheel in place, now we're going to reinstall our factory bolts. Now, you can certainly upgrade to ARP hardware, something like that if you'd like. But for the purposes of this video, we're just going to reuse our factory flywheel bolts. Always important too, I like to use blue thread locker on these bolts along with our pressure plate bolts, as you'll see in a minute. But just a little dab will do ya here on the flywheel bolts just to make sure they don't back out. With our Loctite applied to all of our bolts, we're just going to start them by hand, run them in, and then we obviously have a torque sequence to go over, which is very important. So, now I have a cordless impact set to the absolute lowest torque setting. The purpose here is not the hammer them down, but just to kinda run them in, snug them up, and then we'll go back and do our torque sequence with our wrench. As you can see, I'm barely applying any pressure. The purpose there is just to take some of the slack out of the threads. That way, when we get our torque wrench on it, we're not turning it forever.Now, we're going to go ahead and do our torque sequence here with our flywheel bolts. Exedy states to just torque this thing down to factory specs, which is 70 foot-pounds here. So, I have my torque wrench, we have our 19-millimeter socket. And at this point, you can either use something like this, which is a flywheel holder tool. Basically turns this into a one-man job, or if you have a buddy around, you can recruit them into holding the flywheel for you, putting a socket on the crank sprocket. There's a couple of different ways to do that. But basically, the goal is here to prevent that flywheel from spinning so you can get an accurate torque rating here on each bolt. More importantly, you want to go in the star pattern. I know that's kind of something a lot of people know, but if you don't know, you don't want to just go around in a circle. You go in a star-like pattern around the flywheel just to make sure it's distributed equally. So, now that we have our tools, we're going to get to work.So, with our flywheel fully torqued down, I have some Brakleen and a clean rag, and the goal here, guys, is to clean the entire surface of your brand new flywheel. Why? Well, because any assembly oil, any dirty grease, or handprints on that thing can basically compromise the grip or the bite of your brand new clutch. So, you'll want to get all that stuff off first, before we go ahead and install our friction disc and eventually our pressure plate as well. All right, guys. With that flywheel nice and clean, that's gonna wrap up the installation of the Exedy flywheel by itself. But if you want to hang out with me for a bit, we'll walk you through the install of our Exedy clutch up next.All right, guys, now that we have our stock clutch removed from the car, I figured it'd be a great opportunity to throw them both on a table, kind of show you the subtle differences between these two options. And I do say subtle because this is the Exedy Mach 1, and as you guys know, this is essentially a stock replacement and it really shows when you have them side by side. Pressure plates are going to look nearly identical. Granted this one does have about 40% more clamping force, which is a nice thing to point out, but the friction discs here look nearly identical. And that's not a bad thing, in this case, because you know what you're getting. Again, stock replacement stage 1 clutch, about 500 pound-feet torque capacity this is going to hold. But because it maintains or holds onto that organic material here for the friction material, you're going to get a very smooth engagement, very easy drivability, just like your stock clutch. That's the big takeaway here.Again, if you're going for huge power, you need something that's going to hold a ton of torque, ton of horsepower. This isn't going to be your clutch. This is going to again be a light bolt-on car, daily driver stock replacement, and it's going to get you a lot of miles and it's going to be very easy to drive while on the road. Now, if this were something different, say like a Kevlar or maybe a cerametallic material, that's going to give you a little bit more holding power, but that's where the drivability trade-off comes into play. So, not the case here again, the Exedy Mach 500 Stage 1, very daily driver-friendly, very streetable, and essentially, guys, it's going to feel like a stock replacement. But now that you know the subtle differences again between the two, what do you say we show you how to get this installed?All right. For the first step here for our clutch installation, we have our clutch alignment tool going through the splines of our friction disc. The side that kind of has the hat on it goes out towards the transmission. The flat side, as you guys can see, goes towards the flywheel itself. Now, you want to stick the little nub here of the clutch alignment tool into where the pilot bearing goes, and then that'll basically hold the clutch in place while you can put the pressure plate over top.All right, so again you just want to stick the alignment tool here into where the pilot bearing goes. That again will hold your disc in place, but for now, we're going to grab our pressure plate and get it lined up. Now, earlier, if you remember, guys, I marked the flywheel and the pressure plate, so I'm gonna line my little mark right there and slide everything over those dowels. So, here, we need to make sure we get our dowels aligned. And once we do, a little dead blow action will be the ticket. For now I'm going to grab my dead blow here and just tap it onto the dowels.With our pressure plate now sitting on the dowels, I have some bolts here along with some blue Loctite, again, very important step. We're just gonna put a little dab on each bolt here before we get it into the pressure plate. And again, there is another star pattern involved along with some torque settings that we're going to tell you about once we get there. But first, let's prep with our bolts. With our bolts prepped, now we're going to go ahead and install them into the pressure plate. Again, just kind of hand-tighten them, maybe snug them up with a socket wrench, and then we're going to go back and do our torque sequence to 47 foot-pounds.All right, guys, we're in the home stretch here with our clutch install. Now, we have our torque wrench set to 47 foot-pounds, 12-millimeter socket. And again, this is one of those situations where your flywheel probably end up turning on you. So, I have my little one-man-band flywheel holder tool, but you can grab a buddy, have them help you hold the flywheel again, put a socket on the crank pulley, whatever you want to use. So, let's tighten these up again in that star pattern. Very important.All right, guys, so with that pressure plate fully torqued, essentially the clutch itself is complete. But as I mentioned earlier in the video, the Exedy kit does include a brand new hydraulic throwout bearing, which we're going to show you how to install next. For a hydraulic throwout bearing, pretty simple swap really here, guys. But first things first, we need our pick tool in order to remove this elbow here. Now, this connects to the other end of your clutch line, of course, but we need to get this off our factory throwout bearing first before we can pull it out through the transmission. All right. Just simply pull this clip out and that should release it from the elbow. Next up, we have two 8-millimeter bolts that secures the factory throwout bearing to the input shaft here, we're gonna remove those next.All right. Next up, guys, I have a flat-head screwdriver here. What we need to do is kind of work out this black plastic clip that secures the line to the transmission. Once we pop that guy off, we can go ahead and slide off our factory throwout bearing. All right, guys, I'm going to throw a little grease here on the input shaft before we go bolting up our brand new throwout bearing, and then we'll get that in place.Now that we have our brand new throwout bearing in hand, guys, I do want to point out that Exedy claims you can bench bleed this thing first before installation. Basically, what you'd want to do is get a little container of DOT 3, put this end in it, and just pump this thing up as much as you can, get as much fluid in the bearing as possible. This is a self-bleeding throwout bearing, meaning if you've done a clutch in these things before, you know you have to pump the pedal a hundred times before you finally get some pressure built up. Doing that, bench bleeding this would certainly speed that process up. You don't have to, but I did want to point that out before we slap this in.All right. This really can go on one way, guys. So, just go ahead and throw the bearing onto your input shaft, making sure you get the clutch line through the hole, line up your holes, and insert your 8-millimeter bolts. Just gonna go ahead and speed-tighten these up here. Now, we're gonna reinstall this plastic clip which secures the line in the transmission. To do so, basically insert it over the neck of your clutch line here and just kind of wiggle it in place. You might need to use your flat-head screwdriver to help get the little tab over the collar. All right. With our collar in place, now we're going to grab our elbow and reinstall it here onto our throwout bearing line and then lock it in place with our little metal clip.All right. With the throwout bearing in place, that's going to wrap up the install of our Exedy Mach 500 Stage 1 Clutch. A couple things to keep in mind here, guys, obviously you need to reassemble the car, get the trans back in place, along with your driveshaft and exhaust. And you also want to make sure you bleed the clutch properly first. Again, pump that clutch pedal up about a hundred times. It's going to take you a while, believe me, but once the pedal gets some pressure in it, you'll know it's good to go. Last but not the least, Exedy's going to strongly recommend breaking in the clutch properly, about 750 miles or so just normal street driving before you move into the aggressive driving, dumping the clutch, you get the point. But for the most part, guys, that's it. Obviously, you can see it's a pretty involved installation.We hope you enjoyed this review and install of the Exedy Clutch for your '11 to '17 GT at home. And keep in mind, for more cool products and videos like this, keep it right here at americanmuscle.com.
Features, Description, Reviews, Q&A, Specs & Installation
It's recommended that you add an SR Performance Braided Stainless Steel Hydraulic Clutch Line during your new clutch install. Stock plastic clutch lines can fail during aggressive driving. Stainless steel clutch lines help prevent gear lockout and provide superior clutch pedal feel, even under the toughest conditions.
Fitment:
Exedy 07807CSCAM
CA Residents: WARNING: Cancer and Reproductive Harm - www.P65Warnings.ca.gov
Installation Info
Installation Time
(approx) 4 Hours
Difficulty Level:
Mechanical expertise or professional installation required.
What's in the Box
Year/Model: | 2011-2017 GT | Manufacturer: | Exedy |
HP/TQ Rating @ Rear Wheels: | 616 ft-lbs | Transmission Type: | MT-82 |
Disc Dimensions: | 280mm outer diameter | Material: | Organic |
SFI Approved: | Yes | Hardware Included: | Grooved Pressure Plate, Clutch Disc, Slave Cylinder/Hydraulic Throwout Bearing, Alignment Tool and Pilot Bearing |
Tech Guides:
10 More Questions