Last March, I bought a dual mass flywheel for my 545i off carolinaclutch.com. I arrived on the website from a google search of “545i dual mass flywheel.” This arrives directly on their page for a LUK DMF 053. On that page, at the time of ordering (and writing) is the 2004 545i under applications.

This January, I finally had time to repair my partly slipping clutch. The car has 150k kms, with light spalling on the flywheel. Unfortunately, as I began to remove the original flywheel, I realized the car has a 9 bolt crank and the flywheel is an 8 bolt. A little extra research revealed other websites did not have this mistake in their database, and clearly they had sent the wrong part.

Long story short, I phoned twice and they refused to return the part. I was forced to assemble the car with the original flywheel, which will certainly not last the life of the new clutch.

Through no fault of my own, I now own a $400 dead weight. Thank you Carolina Clutch!