Viper & Semi Clutches

Factual Questions
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  1. What’s the physical difference between a high performance clutch on, say, a Dodge Viper and a clutch on semi-truck, 18 wheeler? Are they made of different material? If so, what different properties do these materials exhibit?

Are they bigger?

  1. Here’s a hypothetical question for fun: If you put a semi-truck clutch in a Dodge Viper, how long would it last, compared to the Dodge Viper clutch in a Dodge Viper, everything else held constant, such as driving style.
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Q #2: It’d last exactly the same length of time: 14,000 miles…when the viper owner realizes that just because his car can go 600 mph, he should probably not take a corner at that speed. The Viper has this tendency to roll…and then the clutch is more or less useless.

Sorry for the lame post. It is an interesting question and this is just a long-winded and opinionated “bump.”

Carry on

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A Viper clutch is made for a 3600 pound car with 500 pound feet of torque.

A semi truck clutch is designed for 80,000+ pounds and much more torque depending on the engine/trans combo. The friction materials are similar but the truck clutch probably has more stages (friction plates). The truck clutch is much bigger and would be extremely difficult to attatch to the viper engine/trans combo.
I suppose hypothetically it would last longer in a Viper. But your Viper performance would suffer greatly due to the significant increase in rotating mass. Why don’t you drive an empty semi-tractor. It would be operating at 55,000+ pounds less than its designed for so you should expect significant longevity from your
mechanical sysyems. Most over the road trucks can go 500,000 miles before an overhaul; for day to day operation, unloaded, I bet you could expect 750,000 to a million miles before you would need a new one. If you drove 100 miles a day that would be about 27 years.