Clutch kit Sachs or Exedy

If stock or mild performance gains, take the m20 flywheel and a stock m20 sachs clutch kit (bmw always sachs) and it will hold up very easily. They can hold way more torque than they are advertised for and last forever if not clutchkicked to hell.

Excedy is OEM. I have one in my turbo car and it works great

I used sachs in the past with no issues.

I have this in my GTI. It's great.

Having sold many OEM Sachs and Luk clutch kits, I noticed pressure plate rivets are slightly taller on modified pressure plates from many major clutch tuning brands.

For 200-320 kW, we've had great success with the Exedy standard replacement kit + upgraded billet flywheel. It lets the disc use all its material without heat-sinking the flywheel which is common on oem flywheels, and we've fitted 100+ cars comfortably making 400 hp on stock gearboxes. customer feedback is the exedy standard replacement drives smooth like stock, holds power, keeps the driveline and gearbox together, shifts like butter at high rom, and has been super reliable.

Exedy Stage 1 upgrade; virtually same kit as OEM, except pressure plate is just a wee bit stronger than factory to help hold a tad bit more power (not that you'll need it, but it's a nice upgrade nonetheless); I personally liked the Exedy more for daily drivability

Totally normal, been running a exedy stage 1 for 18k miles with this noise. Very pronounced in 5th gear 3k rpm to around 2.5k in my car

This is normal. I'm running exedy clutch with their lightweight flywheel on my 2014 as well.

Sorry to burst this bubble, that I was hoping to benefit from, but I ordered from Rock Auto, it arrived today, and the Sachs kit is no longer an FCC friction disk with caged springs. The springs are no longer caged like OEM. The pressure plate also, although it looks similar is also not marked as FCC, both are just marked with weird Sachs part numbers that don't co-relate with any searches that I have done, but they do match the numbers on the outside of the Sachs box it shipped in. Both bearings are still marked as Nachi and Japan. The Sachs box says made in Japan on the outside, but the design of the friction disc is different and there is no FCC branding on either the disk or the plate. I'm not sure how much I missed this deal by, but I was gutted to find out this is no longer the deal that it was. Returning it tomorrow.