clutch dowel pins

[Jeff Chambers]

Originally Posted by Dark_5.0

Some after market flywheels dont even have dowel pins so why are the stock ones so important? My billet flywheel doesnt have them or a place for them so I just bought high grade bolts and used some locktite.

Are you absolutely positive on that? Are you sure that the flywheel maker didn't want you to transfer the hole locations and re-locate the dowels? I've never seen a flywheel without dowels. The clearance hole on a 1/4" hole is .040" over-sized. If you take into maximum material conditions and locational tolerances, this means that your clutch could be more than 0.062" off center! Take that 13-lb pressure plate at 5000RPM through a .062" orbit and let me know how much that disturbs your engine balance. Not to mention that the dowels transmit the shear force which is how the clutch transmits the engine power.

I've been wrong once or twice before, but I'd bet $1.50 that there's provisions for dowels and the vendor instructions told you to use them.