'95 m900. Most recent work done was a chain & sprocket replacement. Clutch just froze up on me on my way home today and I'm looking for tips on what to start looking for.
Symptoms:
I was just getting ready to get off the freeway and when I down shifted to 5th I noticed that the clutch felt funny. While stopped at the light I noticed that the clutch felt like it wasn't disengaging all the way because the clutch lever wasn't pulling in all the way but there was no clutch drag. I gave it a few squeezes to see if it was an air bubble but the condition neither improved nor worsened. Then after I went a couple more blocks I noticed that the clutch wasn't pulling as far anymore At this point the lever was only pulling in about half way. The clutch was still disengaging and engaging though but I was close enough to my gf apt that I decided to call it quits and throw it in a neutral and coast it before it was too late. Good thing too because right after I threw it into neutral the clutch froze up. The lever will barely budge and the plate moves a negligible amount.
Preliminary investigation:
There's practically no light and my girlfriend only has a little maglite so I can't do much investigating now. I took off the clutch cover to see if it was anything glaringly obvious. The clutch plates that I can see are hammered decently. There's about a .5mm of hammered metal flaring out. I also noticed that the plates don't seem to line up with the worn indents on the basket. Basket indentation isn't terribly bad. I don't think that the plates are hanging up on the basket but it'd be nice if that were the case since that's easy to fix. There is no hydraulic fluid that I can see anywhere on the left side of the bike. I didn't open up the reservoir to see what the level is.
Minor odd thing to note is that the outside tops of my spring caps are shiny like they've been wearing on something. My carbon fiber clutch cover has slight marks on the inside as well. I didn't think the clearance was that close.
Tips?
Have you checked that the push rod is moving in and out with the pressure plate removed?
Quote from: Capo on August 29, 2008, 03:03:48 AM
Have you checked that the push rod is moving in and out with the pressure plate removed?
The push rod will only move out when you pull the lever and the pressure plate's removed. It's the springs on the PP that push everything back. So if you do removed the PP to check for motion on the rod - don't pull the lever more than a couple times before pushing the push rod back in.
The whole bit about the lever not moving is the troubling part. The lever not moving eliminates some of the simple/obvious faults like a leak or air in the system.
I'd start trying to eliminate possible fault areas. Basically you've got 2 major ones. The master and the slave.
A) Get out your bleeder gear and crack open the bleeder on the slave, and see if you can pull the lever. Doing that cuts the slave out of the hydraulic circuit. IF you can pull the lever and fluid moves out of the bleeder - hooray your master is fine. But that means that there's some possible issue with your clutch slave....
B) So if you masters fine according to (A) then (personally) I'd have my slave off (can you on a 95?) and then see if I can get the lever to move, while watching the the piston in the slave. IF you do this, push the piston as far into the bore as you can byt hand. IF the lever moves and the piston starts to push out of the bore, that's good, since it means the slave is probably OK....
C) ok so the master and slave are fine.... so it would seem that something like the push rod is stuck.
But I'll leave off there for now. If A and B get you to C, then post up and we'll carry on
The spring caps rubbing on the cover make me think that perhaps the clutch hub nut has come loose.
Removing the pressure plate will show a lot....
Quote from: Speeddog on August 29, 2008, 08:40:58 AM
The spring caps rubbing on the cover make me think that perhaps the clutch hub nut has come loose.
Removing the pressure plate will show a lot....
Hmm I glossed over that detail... damn ADD.
Follow speeddogs advice before mine. Pulling off the pressure plate will take a lot less effort then getting set up to bleed this or that... and those rub marks are indicative of a problem
Nick wins. Hub nut was loose. I'm gonna hit it with an impact gun tomorrow. Still, I don't think that was the only problem. After having taken out all of the plates I still couldn't squeeze the clutch. So for kicks I unmounted the slave and then I was able to pull the clutch. I also found a small, broken O-ring that sits around the push round and goes between my Yoyodine slave and the engine case. So I'm thinking there's something up on the left side of the bike as well. I'm gonna clean up the stuff around the slave, replace the O-ring and rebleed.
Of course my dad had to go and pull the clutch when I told him not to and he dropped half the slave. [roll] It can be so frustrating when someone is only trying to help but they take forever to help or cause extra problems. :-\ I trucked the bike home so I can use my dad's tools. I'll let ya know how it turns out.
edit:
It took me forever to find the "common" O-ring that is on the Yoyodyne clutch slave. Finally settled on something that was close enough and started throwing everything back together. All seems fine. I still need to finesse the clutch pack height now that I'm putting my Barnette's back in but it seems to work correctly for the most part now. Should take me about 15 minutes to pull out a plate tomorrow morning and then everything should be peachy. Thanks for the suggestions, guys! [thumbsup]