My thoughts are that the 'teeth' of the steel or friction plates are expanding and not sliding in he basket easily, so when hot it is not disengaging into neutral. As Darkman has said, a thorough check of the plates for burring and fit would be beneficial. Time to order another set of gaskets and oil...£50 odd quid.
Here is a good summary of proceedure From Triumphtourque.com: check freeplay at lever, should be about 1-2mm. do you have any freeplay in your drive chain? check with rider seated on bike, 20-30mm total up and down movement is good. check the lifter arm, is the working edge worn away? if it is, replace. check the clutch basket, is it heavily grooved? it is worth spending the time filing and polishing out the marks, before you throw in the towel and buy new. check the plates are lubed, are they dry? remove plates, soak overnite in engine oil, refit. check if the steel clutch plates are true, or bent? if bent, get new ones. dont forget to get a new clutch cover gasket, and a lifter arm o ring.
I thought the oil level was higher then that and would spill out. Maybe I can risk leaning the bike against something to get a better angle... Cheers Jody
I've had mine apart 3 times now and never had any oil spillage whilst on the side stand mate... Cheers for the tips.....I'll have a look at mine at the weekend hopefully Also I've reused the same paper gaskets 2 times now... Once I get it right I'll treat myself to some genuine gaskets......
The only ones I see on the Triumph site are paper ones at £8 to £10 each Where would I get proper ones...mine is a 2010 Speedie
Perhaps it's my description that's misleading.... I bought a set of paper/card gaskets off ebay for £12 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/162259162643 I'll get the OEM ones (more dense) when I get it fixed
The more heat you put in the less play you get which should not make it worse, i recon it would be worth fitting new plates as they could be knackered :-( The service wear rate is only .20 on each plate so they might look ok :-( Also the inner and outer plates are smaller, don't get them wrong.
Yeah the fibre order is correct....I even followed the workshop manual and put the steels in the correct order
Found a good write up on someone cleaning up their clutch plate tabs on a Beta trials bike (which suffer the same symptoms of our clutches) All a good read but page 8 onwards is where the filing starts
Bloody good write up, I must admit I thought out of the factory would be as they should be and ready to go, but after reading that, I will definitly have to take the clutch appart again and get the dremel out, plus some jewellers files. I would almost be tempted to take out 2 of the 5 springs to lighten the clutch! Damn, wish I had read this a few weeks ago, I wouldn't have even bought new plates! Thanks for linking Jody, hopefully this would give eveyone something to do over the winter to help towards smoother riding.
No problem mate.... I'm also going to measure my clutch stack as per the workshop manual.... As I've said before my fibre plates look brand new so I want to check it's not too big...
@Red Thunder Did you get round to checking your clutch basket/plate tab clearance ? I shall be doing mine this Friday/Saturday so I'll let you know how I get on
I have been working on my 'old' friction plates that I took out. Using a file to round off the teeth. While doing that I couldn't help think what if I had taken a smidging too much off making the grip in the basket different. I need to use the digital measurer thing to check them out. I still have 4 plates to do though. I would then need to get the gaskets. So not done yet, and work in progress edited: poor spelling!
I thought about doing that as I have verniers etc. But I couldn't be bothered with being that careful.... My Ducati plates were loose as anything in the slots and that clutch worked fine If I do take a bit too much off and it still drags then at least I know 100% it's not the plates catching
I've also read that some people who originally went to Triumph dealers with this issue were told by the dealers that Triumph told them to file a flat into the clutch pin to increase oil flow to the clutch..... There is also an updated clutch pin which superceded the original one Just need to find out which one is in mine :/
TBH, the new plates I put in are doing well. Not catching and getting neutral only when I want it. Maybe they have bedded in and working as intended! I may leave it alone while I am happy with it.
Just got in from work and pulled it all apart..... Clutch plate tabs don't look too rough....I'll clean them up anyway Worst thing is I literally stopped riding put my bike in the garage and was taking the plates out 5 minutes later and they were all bone dry..... Think I'll give the pin a bit of a flat to let some (more) oil get to the plates
