Exedy Mach 400 Stage 1 Organic Clutch Kit; 10-Spline (Late 01-04 Mustang GT; 99-04 Mustang Cobra, Mach 1)

Video Review & Installation

Justin: The Exedy Mach 400 Stage 2 clutch will appeal to the late-2001 to 2004 GT owners, the '99 to '04 Cobra owners, and the '03 to '04 Mach 1 owners who are looking for a daily driver friendly clutch that is capable of holding upwards of 510 pound-feet of torque to the crank. Now, prospective buyers can look forward to a relatively pleasant driving experience with this clutch thanks to the sprung hub and organic friction material, which typically is a little bit easier to drive in stop-and-go situations when compared to say a metallic disc in addition to a puck-style design. Now your price point for this extremely popular Exedy will also be extremely affordable at the mid $200 level, while the install will get a soft three out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter from me with a little bit more detail to come later in the video. But first things first, let's dive a little deeper here into the Mach 400 Stage 2 clutch from Exedy. And again, the big number to keep in mind, guys, is that torque rating of 510 pound-feet to the crank. So my two valve owners out there, this opens up this clutch for basic bolt-ons, maybe even some mild forced induction setups. '03 to '04 Cobra guys, I would watch your mods here because stock Eaton cars with bolt-ons should be good with this clutch. However, the guys who have switched over to a Twin-Screw or TVS, you might wanna consider a little bit more firepower. But let's talk a little bit more about how this clutch from Exedy is going to hold that power, and it all starts with the friction disk. Now, this guy does utilize that organic disc, which, in my opinion, will have its pros and also its cons. The biggest pro obviously when checking out an organic disc like this is gonna be the very, very smooth engagement in addition to the drivability benefits. Listen, guys, this clutch will be very streetable, not all that different from the stock clutch that's in your car now. And at the same time, it will still hold a little bit more power like we've already discussed, all for half the price if not more than a more expensive twin-disc. Now the only con with going with a clutch like this is the eventual limit or ceiling you will hit when it comes to just how much power this guy will be able to hold. And at some point, you're left with the choice, either step up to a cerametallic or maybe a kevlar material which is going to be less forgiving on the street or you can fork out the bigger bucks to grab a twin-disc clutch, which is arguably the best of both worlds if you can swing it. As far as what's included with this particular kit, guys, well, the stage-two equivalent from Exedy will feature that single organic compound disc with that sprung hub, by the way, which will help reduce drivetrain shock overall. Now, this disc does come paired alongside Exedy's high clamp load pressure plate. And it is also worth mentioning for guys looking to upgrade their flywheel at the same time as their clutch, Exedy is gonna strongly recommend sticking with their chromoly option in the flywheel category. And that's something a lot of clutch manufacturers will do, right, because they wanna guarantee fitment with their clutch and their flywheel in addition to the best results. Also, it's never a bad idea to check out a new pilot bearing in addition to a throwout bearing, which both are available on the product page for around 50 to 60 bucks total. Listen, I know it's not that fun spending extra money on parts you didn't really anticipate buying at first, but you're gonna have the trans down. You're doing all of this work. You might as well freshen everything up while you're in there as it's something you hate to have to pull that trans back down a few thousand miles down the road. But let's shift gears and talk about that installation a little bit more. And like I mentioned earlier, guys, this one isn't gonna be for the first-time wrenchers out there because it's a little bit more in-depth. However, those of you who don't mind spending some time in the shop or garage, a clutch job, you all know, isn't the end of the world. So with that said, I'm gonna go soft three out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter here, a couple of hours to a half a day or maybe a little bit more in the shop or garage to get this one banged out, depending on your setup and your expertise and just how fast you like to work. And to give you a better idea of what's expected for this job, here is a detailed walkthrough in addition to a tool breakdown. Man: We're gonna start off up top here at the battery. Since we're removing the starter, it's a great idea to disconnect your positive and negative battery cable. I've got an 8-millimeter socket on my ratchet here. All right. Next, we're gonna remove the shifter. That's gonna give us a little more clearance for when we're ready to drop the transmission out. The first thing we're gonna do is remove the shift ball followed by the plastic trim. Once we get that up, there's gonna be four bolts to remove the shifter. All right. Now if we just pull up on our trim piece here, it should pop out. And we'll have to remove our 12-volt cigarette lighter wire right here. All right. We're gonna remove the heat shield right here. It's four 8-millimeter bolts. All right. Now we can pull our heat shield out. And next, we're gonna remove the four bolts that hold the shifter to the transmission. All right. I've got a 13-millimeter socket on a quarter-inch drive ratchet. All right. Now we're ready to pull our shifter out. All right. We got the car up in the air. We're gonna start off by removing some of the exhaust. We can do the H-pipe first. There's 4 15-millimeter nuts up on the exhaust manifolds that we need to remove first followed by the oxygen sensor harness. We have our rear 02 sensors here that need to be removed and last but not least, the rear H-pipe to muffler bolts. All right. Now we can disconnect the 02 sensor harness. It can be a little tough to see once I get my hands up in here. Basically, it sits on top of the transmission. You can get one hand in there to release the tab. There's one. All right. We can now unclip our rear 02 sensors. And the last thing before we drop our H-pipe out is we're gonna disconnect the rear bolts here. They're 14-millimeter. We're now ready to pull our stock H-pipe out. All right. Next thing we're gonna do is remove our driveshaft. Now, it's good practice to mark your driveshaft with a Sharpie before you pull it just so when you go to put it back together, you can line your marks up and you know everything's gonna be exactly the same as it was. And these bolts, we have four of them. They're a 12-millimeter. All right. Next up is the starter. First thing we're gonna do is remove the two wires that are connected to the starter. Make sure you have your battery cables disconnected at this point. The small wire on here is under a 10-millimeter nut. All right. Next, there's three bolts that hold the starter in place. They are a 13-millimeter. All right. With a 10-millimeter socket, we can pull the clutch dust cover inspection box here. All right. I have a pry bar here. What I'm gonna do is place it in between the clutch fork and the transmission. I'm gonna take some of the pressure off the clutch fork so I can release the clutch cable. In order to get our clutch cable out of the transmission, we need to pull this little C-clip right here. Just take a pair of pliers and pull it out then we can pull clutch cable right out of the transmission. The last thing we're gonna do before we pull the transmission is disconnect all the wires that are attached to it. There's a transmission harness that comes down from the top here. There's a couple plugs we need to pull. We're gonna start back here. All right. I'm gonna unplug this guy here. And then we'll put this harness aside, and we can start to unbolt the transmission at this point. We've got a pole jack in place here on the tail end of the trans. Next thing we're gonna do is remove the trans crossmember. It's a 13-millimeter socket. There's four bolts, two on each side. It's gonna allow us to drop the trans down a little bit to gain access to the upper bolts on the bell housing. All right. So I realized that we need to remove this cross brace here. With this out, it's gonna let us drop the trans a little bit more so we have more room up top to get the upper bolts. For the two upper transmission bolts, I have a very long extension with a 13-millimeter universal socket on it. All right. We got the two upper transmission bolts out. I have brought in my transmission jack, and I've strapped the transmission to the jack. If you guys don't have one of these, you can use a floor jack or a pole jack. We have three bolts left on this side of the trans and two bolts left on the right side of the trans. After that, we're ready to pull this thing right out of here. All right. We've got all our transmission bolts out. Now we're ready to remove the transmission. I'm gonna have a buddy help me lift this thing out of here. All right. Now that we got the trans out, we can remove the stock clutch. I've got a 13-millimeter socket. We're gonna go around and remove the six bolts that hold the clutch into place. We're ready to start installing our new clutch. First thing we're gonna do is put the disk up in place. All right. We're gonna throw our new clutch in place. We have our alignment pin here that Exedy supplies us. Okay, now we're gonna put our pressure plate up in place. Once you've got your dowel pins lined up, you can start throwing some bolts in place. All right. We've got all our bolts started. I'm going to go around tighten them up now. I have a 13-millimeter on my impact gun. We have our transmission on the transmission jack and we're ready to throw the trans up back into place. All right. We can get our wiring harness back in place now, pushpins back in the holes in the transmission and we'll plug this sensor back in over here and then we got one more plug to plug back in right here. These are our o2 sensors. We'll hook them up when we get our exhaust back into place. All right. We're ready to bolt the transmission crossmember back up to the floor of the car. I'm gonna raise my pole jack, get a couple bolts started. We're now gonna put our clutch cable back onto the clutch fork in the transmission. Put our retainer back on. All right. We're gonna need a pry bar to get the shift fork. Now we can put our dust cover back in place. We're now gonna put our starter back into place. All right. We're gonna hook our starter wires up now. This is a 13-millimeter nut, followed by this small wire, which is a 10-millimeter nut. All right. Up next is the driveshaft. We will be putting this back into place. All right. You wanna line your driveshaft up to mark that we made when we uninstalled it and we'll get some bolts started. We are now ready to reinstall our H-pipe. We're gonna put it up in place, get a couple bolts on it, and then we'll tighten it all down. All right. We can throw our k-member support brace back up in place now. All right. We can plug our rear 02 sensors back in now. All right. We're plugging our front o2 sensors in now. They're really hard to see. Make sure you listen for the click. We're now ready to reinstall our shifter. Before you put the shifter in though, make sure you take some Scotch-Brite or some very light sandpaper. Clean the old silicone off the bottom of the shifter and off the top of the transmission. Get yourself some black RTV so you get a good seal, and we'll reinstall our shifter. All right. Now we can drop our shifter into place. All right. We can throw our sound-deadening plate back in. And snap this guy back into place. Put our shift knob back on. And last but not least, we're going to hook up our battery cables. That's gonna wrap up our review and install. Be sure to check out more at americanmuscle.com.