Hello good folks, Looking to replace my clutch basket and wondered if more £££ is better? Aslong as it's 7075 and not machined by a 7 year old child in china surely they're the same? Does anyone have experience with the fancy steel insert ones?
Connor, I replaced my OEM steel one (on a 748 at 14k miles with 2mm notches in the basket) and used the Barnett alloy basket with stainless steel plate engagement inserts. Observations on Barnett baskets: they sound different from almost all the others due to the stainless steel inserts taking the hits from the friction plate tangs; the clearances specified by Ducati in the factory book at 1.6mm max must be ignored as the spacing is slightly wider than OEM; 28k miles later the Barnett basket is still 100% notch free. Using OEM or aftermarket alloy plates with Barnett baskets it will be the alloy friction plate tangs which wear and will drive friction plate replacement more often than OEM baskets. Barnett friction plates did not offer any practical advantages for road use but were cheaper than OEM. Neufren plates are OK, 60% of the price of OEM but the tangs are not thickened so they become too noisy long before OEM ones, I now stick with OEM as they last 50% longer than my ears allow. I have never worn out the friction material on a set of plates. An adequately trained 7 year old on a properly set up CNC machine will produce as good components as an adequately trained 40 year old, IME the problem with some Chinese stuff is QC/QA and sellers (or selling departments) not understanding precise technical requirements very well, so buy at risk. If 7075 is specified it is better to go for 7075 T6 and higher spec zinc alloys as they are much stronger, however it can become slightly brittle over time in some applications like this where there is a constant hammering.
Thanks for the feedback! Wow.. thats quite impressive with that amount of mileage, some definite food for thought. I replaced my plates not too longer ago with the narrower tanged ones, I wish I'd been more patient and shopped for the thicker ones! 7075 isn't very important, I just meant aslong as it isn't made of cheese! Even the cheaper ones on ebay are T6 so I'm quite hopeful they'll do ok.
