I have a 1989 7.3 2wd F-250 and the clutch has always made some noise during operation of the clutch pedle. But over the years it has became worse and it makes some wierd sounds during take off. But yesterday my clutch slipt on a 1500 rpm take off!

 

Noise during pedal movement, if you hear it even when the engine isn't running, is probably just the pivot shaft or bushings down under the dash. Noise on launch is more likely the clutch itself or poss. the throwout bearing. But if it's slipping now, and not from contamination (such fuel leaking from above), then the clutch is done for, and a new clutch kill will include a new throwout bearing.

 

If your truck still has the stock clutch, you have the dual mass flywheel. All the problems you describe can be caused by the flywheel. If you are going to replace the clutch, I would replace the flywheel with the single mass conversion kit.

 

What are the differences between the two? What would be the pros and cons?

 

Main difference is the design, a DMF is a multiple peice setup with springs that removes some of the pulsing of the engine to reduce vibrations sent from the engine to the trans. A SMF is a solid 1 peice flywheel like most if not all gassers use. If you swap to the SMF most get whats called gear rollover it's a audible growl when you're lugging the engine a bit. But once moving its pretty much inaudible unless your lugging big time. Some members here have many miles on their SMF setups, so your not going to be seeing short term damage anyway, heck its even possibly for A DMF thats in really bad shape to come apart and destroy the trans case so either way there is some small risk. I don't know about where you live but here I could very easily find another ZF5 for far less than a new DMF costs so its a non issue reguardless.

Recently my DMF went bad because the little clutch build into the flywheel was bad and was slipping so bad it was completely undrivable. I now use a SMF on my truck as do alot of others when the time comes for replacement, as a new DMF is around $1000 just for the flywheel alone. One peice of advise I will give you if you want to keep your DMF is replace it when you get a new clutch kit or else you risk having to tear the truck apart agian, if the little clutch thats built into the flywheel is slipping it acts exactly like your actual clutch is going bad.

Or else you risk ending up with a situation like I did, the guy that had the truck before me didn't replace the DMF when they replaced the clutch, so I had a pretty well brand new clutch but a fubar DMF, and was looking at $1k in just the flywheel alone, so I found a SMF kit for about $350 and just had it installed instead and now I'm GTG and won't have to take it all apart agian for a long time.