Faint squeal letting clutch out

[baconbits]

06 5mt, 111k

 

About 16k miles and 18 months ago, some friends and I spent 14 hours on a Saturday smashing pizza and replacing my factory clutch. I went with an 06+ WRX OEM singlemass flywheel and the ClutchMasters FX250.

 

TOB on the old clutch was hammered - skateboard wheel doesn't even begin to describe it - but amazingly, the trans snout was fine. You could see some lines on it but they looked like machining lines. I could barely feel them with a fingernail. I put some high grease on it and slid a new, OEM (I think?) TOB on there that came with the clutch kit.

 

I broke it in with 90% city driving for 1000 miles before any hard shifts.

 

One thing I've noticed the entire time I've had the clutch, the engagements from a dead stop have been extremely harsh unless I get the revs just right. Sometimes it'll be fine from a dead stop if I slowly engage it at idle revs, but anything semi-normal like 1500-2000rpm engagements net me a ton of chatter and bucking. I've driven a manual trans car for 8 years so it's not anything noob-like.

 

Now, something that started every once in a while 6 months ago has been happening on probably a quarter of my engagements from a dead stop - a faint squeal just as the car starts moving after clutch contact. It'll last for about a half second or maybe a bit longer and sounds like a metal-on-metal squeak. It's audible outside the car if you're looking for it and easily heard inside the car. Engaging at higher revs (2500+) from a stop seems to prevent the noise from happening. I have a squeak in the pedal letting the clutch out - probably the pivot - but the squeak I'm referring to is different and has to be coming from something in the bell housing. The pedal feel has been the same since install - smooth operation, no jitters, etc - so I can't imagine I have snout issues from galling, no grease, etc.

 

Thoughts? Ideas? I'm heading to a friend's tomorrow to pull a turbo off his Audi (lol poo pile) and after my car cools down from the hour drive, I'll dig into it and see if I can find anything. I seem to remember there's a cover on the bottom of the trans that shows the flywheel gear? Or maybe the pressure plate? I'm going to check that and if I'm delusional, I'll admit it was probably just the rubber boot on the clutch fork I'm thinking of and pull that off.

 

I'd love to not pull the engine to check things out - like hell I'm doing a clutch on my back again - so I'm after diagnosis ideas that don't involve that.

 

I can stall the car just fine (that's what happens when you drive a different manual car for 400 miles one day and get back in your own) and the clutch grabs as hard as it did the day I finished breaking it in - hard - so I don't think it's a wear issue. There's a very steep hill near my house (15-20% grade) and there's zero issue starting on it.

 

Flywheel bolts backing out? I used blue LocTite and torqued to spec.

Pressure plate bolts backing out? Blue LocTite, torqued to spec.

Trans snout and TOB issues? Please tell me it's not seizing and wrecking the snout.

Chatter is from a/multiple broken clutch springs? F. My. Life.

Could a boned pilot bearing in the flywheel allow enough input shaft runout to cause wonky engagement?

 

Help!

[Max Capacity]

Have you called CM and ask them.

 

My Spec 2+ makes a faint sounds when I let the clutch out in 1st gear sometimes. That's normal for the friction material. I asked.