Frozen clutch, stuck in gear

Hey Krusty,
So I am guessing I should still go through with removing the hub an
all and try to find all those gears? Now that the bike is driving, i
will only drive in 1st gear, and the clutch is still hard as hell t
pull in. Just for a quick reference, the clutch bolts (with the spring
behind them) should be tourqued lightly, correct? I have the specs a
home, but it is some small amount of tourqe I beleive. By the way, b
classic I mean anything old, but not after 75. I have quite afew cars
I can't go in to all that right now, I am at work. So I guess I wil
watch for your reply and see if I should go through with the clutch hu
removal and the reduction gear stuff....I sound real educated, right?

Thanks again,
Bil

 

Well, if you can't free the transmission by rocking the bike back and
forth, it looks like you'll have to go into the clutch side at least
and remove the clutch. The torque on the pressure plate bolts is only 8
or 9 foot pounds, and you should clean all the oil out of the holes the
bolts go into and off the bolts themselves. I never use a torque wrench
on those bolts, it's too easy to break something. I torque them by hand
with a 3/8ths ratchet wrench, but I hold the ratchet wrench right by
the ratchet part, not the end of the handle, to avoid over torquing the
bolts.

I broke an oily head bolt once. I was lucky that the head just broke
off. I will never try to torque an oily bolt again.

Another guy in this NG recently reported that he broke one of his
camshaft
upper clamps on his Bandit (same design as the Kan o' Tuna and the
GSXR) when he went to torque his oily valve cover bolts. So that's a
word to the wise, for when you decide to adjust your own valves.

 

I thought of something else after my last post. Some home mechanics
used to install an extra steel ckutch plate in the clutch stack when
they had slipping problems. So, when you have the clutch apart, count
the steel plates. I count 9 steel plates on the fiche at
www.partsfish.com.

Another problem might be if the new fiber clutch plates weren't
original equipment parts. The fiber plates might be too thick, so
measure them with a vernier caliper.

I've only had clutch problems about twice. Once the clutch slipped
because I'd bored the engine out and it had too much power. So I
installed heavy duty clutch springs.

Another time, I bought a broken down race bike from some friends.
They'd installed Barnett clutch plates, thinking that the Japanese
clutch plates were probably no good. The Barnett plates were crude and
they had to file the rough edges off of the fiber plates, they were
just stamped out of sheet steel and the manufacturer didn't do anything
to the sharp edges.

Later, when I was riding the repaired race bike, I would pull the
clutch all the way in and it would stick disengaged.