snatchy clutch!!!! help please!

[toby2can]

ive just purchased a 318is and its got a horrible clutch bit, its right at the top and feels like its spring loaded. it literally pushes your foot off the paddle, so hard to drive a low speeds.its had a m20 lightweight flywheel fit fitted, ive taken it to my local bmw specialist and they can only suggest putting it back to oem because they dont no enough about interchanging parts. would it be the flywheel that is causing this? i dont think i can afford a new clutch etc right now. any suggestions. thanks

[samuraibaz]

at a guess i would say clutch plate is worn out

[Brianmoooore]

Could this be a similar problem to what you get when you fit a M20 flywheel to a M5x engine and use a standard release bearing and/or unmodified release fork? The release bearing is too short, moving the cylinder end of the release fork further away from the cylinder, and presenting the contact patch between the fork and the bearing at the wrong angle.

[jmc330i]

Could this be a similar problem to what you get when you fit a M20 flywheel to a M5x engine and use a standard release bearing and/or unmodified release fork?

I would think so.
I recently had this exact problem on a mates M52 conversion. While I was away on my hols he had an E21 323i release bearing fitted and problem solved.

My 16v touring was running an M20 flywheel with E21 bearing but the bearing has been rumbling quite a lot. As an experiment, last week I swapped in a new standard E30 M20 bearing which solved the rumbling but the car now has the same high biting point as the M52 did, although it feels worse as the clutch is very snatchy as the OP says (possibly feels worse due to the smaller engine).

I've not looked into it yet, but I think the solution is to weld some tabs on to the clutch fork and use the standard E30 M20 bearing.