| and overheating. The flywheel plates are very "colorful" and the puck material has broken away around the periphery. It is possible that your clutch pedal was not properly adjusted and resulted in the master cylinder piston not returning back behind the relief port. This will cause the clutch system to retain some line pressure which acts to apply force to the throwout arm and reduce the clamping pressure of the pressure plate assy. If you can recall, did your clutch pedal have a bit of travel from the top where there was no more than the clutch pedal return spring force you were feeling? If the pedal had stiffness from the top of the stroke this is an indication that the pedal linkage was not properly adjusted and resulting in the clutch master cylinder never releasing line pressure. There should be a couple of inches of "dead space" in the initial pedal travel. Another way to check this is to climb under the car and see if you can force the clutch lever towards the slave cylinder and cause the slave to compress. You can do this by hand - if you can't make the slave compress by hand, the master isn't releasing line pressure and the pedal linkage needs to be adjusted accordingly. This is only speculation, of course. My best attempt to explain what appears to be slippage and overheating, causing thermal breakdown of the pucks and heavy coloration of the friction plates. If this is the case, it will also lead to premature failure of the crankshaft thrust bearing. Really bad things happen when that goes.. :-( If you have a magnetic dial gauge that can measure to 0.001" accuracy, I would remove the accessory belts and setup the gauge on the flywheel flange of the crank and check your thrust bearing tolerances.... FWIW, I've beat the mess out of RPS clutches and never saw less than 15K miles on them without issue.
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