[ebrparish]

My clutch has been working just fine. I have had no problems at all. It is fairly new (installed new billet basket, barnett plates, and hub a couple of thousand miles ago). I just swapped the stock levers for some new short billet levers. I installed and adjusted the clutch pump activator pin on the new lever to exactly match the original lever before I installed the new lever on the bike. The clutch now doesn't fully engage. I experimented with changing the clutch pump acutator pin length. That didn't help. I then figured that somehow I must have gotten some air in the pump or the line. I have bled the fluid many times both at the master cylinder and the slave cylinder in an effort to make sure that I got any bubbles out of the system. The clutch pull is rock solid. The clutch plates move instantaneouly when the lever is pulled. Therefore, I deduce that I don't have any air bubbles in the system. The clutch still doesn't fully engage. I assume that this means that the clutch isn't moving far enough out when the lever is pulled to disengage the transmission. I, for the life of me, can't figure out why I am having the problem after simply installing a new lever. I did reinstall the OEM lever with the exact original settings. The clutch still will not fully engage. What am I missing?

P.S.: I have searched and read everything that I can find relating to clutch issues on DML. I have also consulted my shop manual. I still can't figure out what the problem is.

 

[alfisti]

So the clutch slips now? What I'm getting is that the plates won't sandwich back together and grip. Am I correct?

 

[dan900sie]

It sounds to me like the new lever has no freeplay. You need to shorten the actuator on the lever enough that there is some lever travel before the pressure plate starts to disengage. If you had gotten air into the lines you would have trouble getting the clutch to disengage, not engage. There is really no adjustment on the master cyl., so you'll need to get it out of the lever.

 

[ebrparish]

Thank you dDan and alfisti, both, for the replies. I, after many complete system bleedings, did, what I considered to be, a final purge of the master cylinder by opening the banjo valve at the master cylinder, fully depressing the clutch lever and then closing the banjo valve before the relese of the clutch lever. Now, having done this several times before, I thought this was a final vain act. However, this last time it worked. The clutch fully engaged! Clearly, I had some air bubble in the line that I heretofore had not dislodged. I am pleased to report that everything is working fine after couple of hours of riding this afternoon while the temperature was high enough to ride without significant discomfort. Thank god, there are few days where the temperature is too low to ride in South Louisiana. What keeps one from riding here is (1) rain, (2) heat (not that dry f**king Arizona heat) and only occasionally, cold. Anyway, the moral of the story is that physics are immutable. My thought was always that somewhere, somehow, there must be air in the linethat prevented the clutch from fully "engaging". That appears to have been the case.

Anyway, thank you for responding. I was beginning to think that I had the ethernet equivalent of body odor!

 

[dan900sie]

Glad you got it sorted out. And take a shower, will ya [laugh]

 

[alfisti]

Glad you got it sorted out. And take a shower, will ya [laugh]

Yeah. You stink. [laugh] [laugh]