hi all as above and im in a mid wales bike rally, what happen and run up to i rode bike with no issues, switched off, loaded bike onto van, vanned it 140miles, no straps or equipment able to interfear with bike, remove bike from van, push to show space....... problem, started bike to move to another area, pull clutch lever in, pressure the same but notice clacking from clutch as if in gear without running quit clutch mod, click into gear and it selects but stalls, bike jumps forward, put to neutral and still cannot rock bike forwards or backwards, its like its in gear but cannot even move pistons like bump starting, its locked up the box, engine starts and runs, bike will not move in neutral with engine running please help, any will do, waiting for tools, my thought are clutch pack seized or first plate has got trapped in basket, your thoughts?? have been running quiet mod for 2000+ miles with no issues
Need to take a look at the clutch pack, if only to eliminate it as the cause. Maybe something like the top plate jumping out of the slots ?? If so, take out one friction plus one plain
same sorta thing happened to my 748 few months back, started getting hard to select first and was creeping forward with clutch pulled in then wouldn't get a gear at all.. bleed the clutch, no change. was gunna swap pack with the 749 but checking that first it's plates are as worn. On removing the 748 plates to measure I noticed some stuck together so gave all a good clean and light sand of steels. Despite the fibers being down to 1.9mm its been all good for 500 odd miles now
Yes, worn plates would make the clutch slip, ratherthan drag. Good point about the plates sticking together - maybe they got wet somehow.
well its in the back of the van, managed to get neutral, sure either stuck or bottom plate jammed, strange though as i rode it up to back of van without any extra noises or warning of a problem....... will get my tools out tomorrow and let you know......tbc.....
Bottom plate can't really affect anything, the mod relies on it jamming. Any problem is likely to be at the other end of the stack but it does seem likely that the stack just stuck together. The friction material is sintered with ferrous fragments in it. These and the steel plates can be subject to light corrosion and stick together if they get damp and an open clutch cover can assist in this process. If this was the problem and all seems to be ok now, then you could well be good to go.
ok so stripdown today and as mine and other helpful inputs suspected it was three fused steel/friction plates.......... now these were newfren friction plates and only just over 2000 miles old.......and their shot!!! what plates do you use??? another question, there's loads of recommended stack heights with different manufaturers of these plates, barring the height, is the DP pressure plate internal teeth meant to engage onto the plate barrel or is the stack height is meant to hold it away from contact of the barrel?? it does mesh properly if stack height reduces, is this feature built in to keep you in motion if plates start to slip??
The pressure plate should always overlap the clutch drum even when the clutch isn't engaged, otherwise there's a chance a steel could slip between them and you wouldn't want that
The recommended stack height for your bike should be in the workshop manual (they differ model to model) but if you've gone down the route of ramming a friction plate in the basket first the recommendations won't really mean anything
thankyou, im on the wine now and mulling it over and over...... so if this is the case that at fully disengaged it should still overlap, how does it make that clack clack noise without clutch mod?, the clacking is caused by the pressure plate holes knocking onto the posts doesnt it? it cant knock on the posts if the finer teeth are still engaged at fully released motion.... or are you informing me that my clutch was fully knackered when i picked it up??
my clack clack could be heard a mile away before the quiet mod!!!!! and yep, i heard it above my termi!!! thx for your input, tomorrow means Ducati get some more moolah off me and i can go for a ride....... Thx
The clak clak noise is the clutch friction plates knocking against the inside of the clutch basket...
ummmm, i thought the lighter, ting ting ringing was the tangs against the basket, its this noise i normally get when i pull the clutch lever in, the heavy clack clack was pre quiet mod......
The stack height can be quite a lot lower than recommended ime without problems. However, it mustn't be higher or there is a danger of the top plate jumping out. Yes, the pressure plate teeth should engage on the drum teeth, that's what keeps it located. I'd it weren't, load would be placed on the spring bolts, which wouldn't last long. The clacking is the stack oscillating within the basket with the tabs bashing the basket slots and cutting notches in it. The jangling is the sound of the un-loaded plates floating around and 'ringing' like the metal disks in a tambourine. Plates sticking together is a pretty natural consequence of running an open clutch cover. If the plates get damp, the ferrous material in the sintered friction plates will corrode to the steel plain plates. They will usually unstick fairly readily though. I have a weird mixture of newish Newfren plates, newish Suzuki plates and the knackered plates the bike came with. The Suzuki plates have the baked in lithium grease mod applied to them and the stack height is seriously low. My clutch never sticks but then it rarely gets wet. It also doesn't slip, doesn't drag and is very smooth, as well as being quiet and two-finger light @Derek on here has had his quiet clutch modded plates last 36,000 miles or so. I don't know what make they were or whether his clutch is open.
I agree, IIRC the recommended height is 38mm but at 38mm I have had problems with getting full clutch disengagement and selecting neutral (aftermarket slave cylinders don't help) so I set mine to 37 - 38mm and they work fine. As for noise, I doubt there is a Ducati out there that's louder than my 916 which has a huge gap (2.5mm) between plate tangs and basket due to both being very worn but there's still plenty of friction material on the plates and it engages smoothly so I'm leaving it for now (although I have got all the parts to replace it when required).
Pro blem is that the worse the wear gets, the harder the tangs hit the basket, so the notches get worse and worse at an accelerating rate. Apparently, Derek's basket after running the quiet mod for 36000 miles was pristine, as were the tangs, it was only worn friction material that necessitated any replacement. It occurred to me that you could replace just one friction plate athe bottom of the pack with a new one and that would calm the clutch down but that's a bad idea because that plate would take all the load of the others and would soon get bashed to the same level as the others, probably with really deep notching as well. The quiet clutch mod with a friction plate replacing the first steel at the bottom of the pack is still the best idea.
