Well most of you know the clutch in my 98 GT has been driving me crazy -- prematurely wearing out, eating throw-out bearings, making excessive noise, etc etc. A buddy of mine works in the service dept. at a new Subaru Dealership near my work so I stopped by and asked some questions. Turns out that my original plan of replacing the clutch (again) and other components that may be faulty (clutch fork, master cylinder, etc etc) and causing my throwout bearings to wear out quickly may actually be a (unknown to me) quite common problem with the transmission case. Apparently BD/BG (and possibly others) tranny cases are a common replacement item for the problems I'm experiencing. What happens is when the 2 halves of the transmission case come together, it forms a shaft that the release bearing rides on. What happens is this shaft wears out and allows the throwout bearing to kink to one side (basically doesnt sit where it's supposed to) and causes it to sit unevenly against the pressure plate, eventually grinding a ring into the pressure plate fingers, all the while causing that awful noise when the clutch is engaged (pedal out all the way). Only way Subaru says to fix it -- buy a new transmission case (bare shell), and have all the internals from your transmission swapped over -- now the case costs $400 bucks, and to swap everything over and put it back in your car the job comes out to around $1300 bucks! Only problem is that this is a temporary fix, over time the same wear will occur and the problem will start all over again. So trying to avoid shelling out that kind of money, you can either a.) buy a used transmission, or b.) buy PDM's Clutch Sleeve Repair kit for $135 shipped from www.tarmac-usa.com .

The product is described as follows:

"This is the practical solution for the notorious grooving of the throw-out bearing collar on Subaru transmissions. This causes clutch chatter, uneven engagement, premature clutch & throw-out bearing failure. This results in expensive transmission case replacement that does not offer a permanent solution for the problem. This solves the problem forever!

Takes less than 10 minutes to install while replacing the clutch assembly or if you have the engine out for any reason. It does not require any modification or machining. It is removable and reusable when doing transmission repairs that require splitting the transmission case. The throw out bearing is available seperatly if you ever need to replace it.

This gives noticeable smoothness to the clutch engagement. It eliminates noisy clutch linkage rattles." (description taken from www.tarmac-usa.com )

Case and point, this is the way to go, has many customers that have used it and had success that will back it up. I just purchased mine the other day so when it comes time to replace my clutch this summer I will give a full review on the product for you guys. I just wanted to give a heads up to anyone having similar problems, or anyone wanting to avoid the problem that is planning on replacing their clutch soon that may want to spend an extra 130 bucks to prevent any problems in the future. If you can avoid spending $1300 bucks on a temporary solution and can spend 10% of that amount to solve your problem, that other 90% can go towards everything that you want it to and that it should go towards!

Hope this helps out, if anyone has/is using this product, please let us know how you like it!