1000ds Friction Plate Thickness

Dont start it with loose belts.
A 5mm allen key should slip through with a push, between belt and idler pulley and a 6mm shouldnt go through.
Clutch plates dont have much friction material as new. They start off 3mm and you can run them down to vitually zero material by adding plains to get pack width.

 

I use Newfren plates. About £50 a set from ebay. Friction plates only.
They are pattern plates and wear well. Available in alloy or steel. Dont mix alloy plates with steel basket or vice versa.
Search on here for 'quiet clutch mod'. Worth doing.

 

Belts should be changed every 2 years but I and lots of other owners go 3-4 years especially on 2valve motors. Contact @Exige on here for good pattern belts. Theyre fairly easy to change yourself with vids on youtube.
Put a pic up of your basket. A bit of notching is acceptable but severe will cause plates to catch and wear new plates at the tangs.
To change basket reqires removing hub that needs clutch holding tool(can be made using old clutch plates) and long breaker bar. Again have a look on youtube. How many miles has your bike done?

 

If the belts are 4 years old, I would change them while you are sorting out the clutch. Its not difficult to do and you can make the tools. I have an Oberon clutch holding tool and although pricey I have used it many times. The early SS has steel friction plates and steel basket. I have this in my 1993 and love the noise with an open cover. The later models like my 2002 ST4S have the alloy basket and friction plates, obviously lighter and less noise. I would imagine this is whats in your 1000. The plain plates will be steel. DONT MIX the alloy plates with a steel basket, or vice versa as wear will increase dramatically on the alloy. As already stated the basket can have some wear, however as the wear increases, so does the gap between the tangs on the plates and the basket, which therefore increases the wear when it rattles around, so its exponential. I agree, put up a pic of the basket so we can advise whether we would change it or not. They should last a long time. Ive also recently tried a pack of NEWFREN alloy friction plates in my ST4S and cant fault them, less than half the price of an OEM clutch pack kit. For the SS I have a set of new steel ones for an old Suzuki model from the 80s, cant remember which, Ill be doing them soon.

 

The 3mm is the overall thickness of the plate including the friction material, the friction material is very thin and will be OK until there's almost none left.

 

I've just measured a brand-new Newfren alloy friction plate; overall thickness is 3mm, the alloy plate is 2mm, so 1mm overall of friction material = 0.5mm per side.

 

In-service measurement of belts is much slacker than when installing new.

Belts will last longer than the 2 years Ducati recommend but I think you might be pushing your luck if yoy extend beyond 4-5 years.
The standard way of setting tension these days is to use a phone app to measure the frequency of a plucked belt in Hz.
@Exige who is the importer for the excellent aftermarket belts mentioned (arguably better than oem) can probably tell you this frequency for your in-service belts but don't reset them to the new-install allen-key method tension or they will be over-tight and could fail or over-load the bearings, causing them to fail and in turn the belts will fail.

The as-new clutch friction material is very thin but doesn't normally wear out before the tabs get too knackered and make an almighty racket. Derek on here got 36000 miles out of a set before they needed to be replaced due to the friction material wearing out.

He uses the quiet clutch mod though, which stops the plate tabs oscillating within the basket slots. This cuts down noise and perhaps more importantly, wear.