Seabee89

I bought a 2005 3500 back in March and it has the G56 trans and dmf i was wondering how much they will handle before the explode like I've read and heard about alot cause when I'm not on deployment I haul trailers alot nothing over 15k mainly livestock and cant afford to be stuck on the side of the road or the smf kit either cause its close to two months pay for me. So can anyone give me some advice or tips to improve the life of the clutch and flywheel untill i can save up enough to replace it?

MikeyB

Drive it easy and no power adders. Once they start slipping it's all downhill from there.

Seabee89

Thats what I figured but didnt want to hear it lol but thanks for the advice

Jona Gold

I never had a problem hauling even in tow mode on my edge chip (juice w/ attitude monitor) and even with 12-15k behind the truck. My first DMF/clutch held fine through the first three steps on the chip- I tried 4 and 5 once- just to see (dang curiosity), 4 held, 5 it slipped.

My clutch was fine when I pulled it at just over 100K- but the flywheel was toast. I now wonder if it would have lasted a lot longer had I never put that chip past the tow setting- since I use the 1st setting for fuel economy mostly, and the 2nd tow setting when I tow- otherwise I don't use it (it was free- and I wanted the gauges so I installed it). I'm about to find out- but it'll be a few years before I'll know.

I spent $2200 "upgrading" to the SMF setup from south bend. That clutch lasted 15k miles before it was shot. The shop warrantied the clutch when SB wouldn't, so they put a Valair in. I hated the noise/hard shifting/vibrations/jumpiness so much I spent another $600 reverting back to the DMF. I will never run another SMF in my truck.

Seabee89

Thanks for the advice and how much noise does the SMF make I'm use to military trucks so noise isn't really an issue but I tend to listen to how any truck that I know well sounds being a mechanic what the navy calls a mechanic ( glorified parts changer) but I keep hearing about this noise from the smf. Please take in to consideration that we don't have manual transmissions anymore in the navy unless it's a tractor trailer.

Grit Dog

That's too bad.
My OFE just bit the dust after "only" 75k miles. It lasted twice as long as the dmf clutch. lThough that was kind of low. Talked to SB and they gave me a break on a new one since the OFE didn't last that long. Very good to work with.

Seabee89

My 05 has 123k on it and still has the stock clutch as far as I know the old farmer that I bought it off of kept really good maintenance records from what I can see

Jona Gold

Seabee the noise depends on the clutch and even the brand. My South Bend was far quieter than the Valair. The South Bend was tolerable, where the Valair was simply not.

There's a deeper issue here I think though- the noise is gear roll-over. You can google and read all you want on that. The Dual Mass Flywheel acts as a damper for torsional spikes in the drive-line (crankshaft, input shaft, etc.) which eliminates that noise.

I upgraded the damper on the front of my truck (to the tune of $450) to reduce noise made by the single mass. If the damping effect is engineered into our Mercedes built G56, running without proper damping could cause issues down the line. Coupling that thought with the fact that I had to have my transmission rebuilt after one year of single mass operation because the input shaft was loose (because of vibrations maybe?), I decided I'd just rather have a stock truck.

I'm pretty alone in this regard though. In all the searching and reading I've done over the last several months I have only read about 1 other person who has gone "backwards" from the SMF to the DMF. Conversely, there are countless posts of people content with the single mass, even if annoyed by the noise at some level.