It appears that the powder clutches, if there are even any available, are quickly becoming scarce. (Along with brushes!) I've been searching and trying to figure out how we can service the powder clutch. Kevin James over at Oh Kei Garage got one apart, but he didn't discover how to refill it: The magic powder - looks like we can get it here: https://cvt-parts.co.nz/overhaul-ki...jx_98Lu45kT4rb4V0l_aem_gvhpTrHkn9bVePZL2r8E_g I've seen the figure "65 g" a few places, but I have no idea if that's anywhere near correct. I turned to our almighty robot overlords to see if it was any help: When you try to (gently) pry the powder clutch apart, it may resist due to the powder, magnetic attraction, etc. The old powder may be clumped and will probably be dark in color (it was in Kevin's video). The powder chamber is the circular cavity between the friction plates. (** Not sure if this is correct) The suggestion was 40-50ccs, which doesn't make sense as the powder is not a liquid. A rough guess though assuming that the iron-based powder is 3.0 - 4.0 g/cm^3, we'd be looking at between 120 and 200 grams. Anyone run across a similar thing? Would love to help put together some sort of "how to" for the community.
I do not have a lot of confidence in rebuilding the powder clutch, but I have bought the stuff to try. I ordered my powder clutch rebuild kit, (clutch bearing and powder), from CVT New Zealand. It was stupid expensive at about $325USD. After ordering that, I found a brand new powder clutch also in New Zealand. It was almost $800USD. I ordered it on Amazon AU on January 15, 2025 and it still has not arrived. It is supposed to ship by May 12, 2025 to one of my friends in Australia. The seller in NZ would not ship to the USA..... I am growing tired of waiting and have bought a Sambar pickup to have all of the components to swap to a manual transmission. If I do not have the powder clutch by the end of June I will swap to the manual tranny..... If you do the powder clutch rebuild let me know how it goes.
So I rebuilt the powder clutch by cleaning it and installing the new bearing. I then put in the new powder and carefully reassembled the housing. This was really easy. My problem is that after reassembling everything the transmission does NOTHING.... The truck idles very high and the transmission does nothing. I think that there is a problem with the ECVT cable adjustment, but I cannot find anything on how to adjust it. Can anyone tell me how to adjust the ECVT cable at the throttle body? Any other suggestions are appreciated.
I found the culprit. A wire connector on the top of the transmission was disconnected. Now the engine has a really fast idle. I will have to trace that problem down tomorrow... Maybe a vacuum leak,
Please let us know how it goes. I have a 96 Dias II with the powder clutch. It’s working well now, but what happens when it doesn’t. I changed the clutch in an Acty recently. So, I think I can handle the trans removal. It would be nice to know there is a good alternative to finding the rare clutch.
