clutch gremlins
 

I'd like to pick your collective brains a bit on some weird clutch behaviour I experienced yesterday.

I was taking an advanced riding course yesterday and we were doing some exercises on extremely slow manoeuvring and a gymkhana. So lots of playing with clutch, throttle and rear brake...

After a while I noticed I was getting less and less slack on the clutch handle. I figured it was just the clutch plates heating up and expanding a bit. So I gave it a bit more slack using the screw at the clutch handle. But it just kept tightening up. So much so that in the end I had reached the maximum of slack I could get out of the screw and the clutch plates were not fully engaged with the handle fully out. So I had to resort to the screw at the other end of the clutch cable. After setting that one from its fully out position to about halfway in gave me back my normal clutch handle free play.

Even after a thorough cool down it is currently still in the same position and functioning ok. So it seems to have stabilized.

Anyone have a clue as to what might have happened? And why it happened so suddenly?

This is a strange one, only way to realy know what happened is to open up the clutch I guess.
Are you sure the cable is completely free moving and hasn't got squashed by the forks or something else?

that was the first thing that came to my mind as well. but it all seems ok.

It seems I was a bit hasty in saying everything was functioning ok again. Rode the bike to work this morning and noticed a fair amount of clutch slip.

If I try to (even slightly) accelerate in 3rd, 4th or 5th at around 4500rpm the rev counter goes ballistics, the engine growls like a grizzly but the speed stays exactly the same...

It looks like I'll be in for a good deal of fettling on the clutch.

What do you guys think? Replace the springs and all will be ok? Or is that just wishful thinking?

I would say you have burnt your clutch out, you would need clutch plates & may be steal plates with springs, it depends on how bad it is when you strip it.

I have also found the XT660 does not like lots of clutch work stop start in traffic & once have had my clutch leaver go soft on me with clutch shudder. I changed the brand & grade of oil I was using & have not felt the problem again. Yours sounds like it has gone to far for this.

I was already afraid that would be the answer.

thanks for sharing you technical expertise, Kev.

The bike was still under manufacturer warranty so I took it to the dealer earlier this week. Went to pick it up again this morning. The verdict: 1 frictionplate was totally gone :sad5:, the others seemed fine. Plenty of metal particles in the oil and the oil filter :(.
A whole new clutch was installed under warranty. In theory clutch plates are wear parts, but the dealer and Mr Yamaha agreed that at only 16000km and with the other plates still looking good it was probably a manufacturing fault.

So I'm happily toodling along on my Ten again...

Will just do an oil change in a couple 100km's just to make sure all metal particles are really gone.

Nice out come, happy riding.:nod:

I would do a filter as well, the oil will pass all the old clutch lining to the filter which will trap the particles that did not come out on the first oil change. I would also change the brand of oil you used.

Tx.
The filter and Motul Oil are already ordered ;)

drained the oil yesterday and had a look at the oil filter. It all looked clean, but I replaced the filter anyways.

Let's hope the new clutch will fair better than the previous one.