What a freaking fiasco. Where the hell do I even start? I guess with the arrival of the parts. Everything showed up that I ordered, but God knows how long these parts have been sitting on the shelf.
The packaging itself on all the parts was old and dry rotted and the plastic was falling apart. The clutch plates looked good but had several several years of dust crusted onto the friction plates. No big deal I just blew them off, but I didn't think to take a pic until I was about to blow off the last plate.
Next, the clutch springs had a bit of surface rust on them. I didn't see any scaling or pitting and they all had consistent tension, so I just went ahead and used them.
Nothing real major and they were still in much better shape than the dinosaurs I pulled off of the bike. First objective was to get the new 21 tooth sprocket on the front. Holy crap what a difference in size! I've changed front sprockets before, but usually only 1 or 2 teeth, never 3. But it went right into place. After loosening the rear wheel and shoving it all the way forward I was able to to get the chain back together I have the perfect tension on the chain, which was a concern because it's a brand new chain and I was afraid it was going to be too short.
Now I was happy to see that the new "cork inserts" are no longer made of cork and appear to be made with some kind hard composite much like a brake pad. I decided that after talking to the guy that blltrdr recommended that I wanted to use some kind of bonding agent in conjunction with the rivets. I ended up using 12 hour panel bond to bond the inserts to the clutch basket. I use this stuff on occasion in auto body repairs. It is designed to bond body panels to the vehicle in place of welding them and is guaranteed to hold for the life of the vehicle. I don't know for sure about its' temperature limits or chemical resistance but my paint rep said that it should work well. All I know is when use it as directed, it is about as permanent as anything you've ever seen. It's practically impossible to unbond the panels once it has fully cured, which is why I used it sparingly. To pound the rivets I took 3 small 1/4" sockets (5mm 6mm and 3/16" I believe it was) placed one directly under the rivet I was working on and the other 2 around the rim of the sprocket to support it and used a punch and hammer to pound the rivets. It came out real nice and I didn't need any of the extra rivets. Got all 7 of them on the first try.
After that I installed the primary cover with some loctite on the bolts and torqued them to 18 fps and let everything dry over night. I don't think the cover is going to come loose again.
This morning I went out and started assembling the clutch basket. Everything went together real smooth and so I went onto making the custom clutch cable. It was kind of a pain in my ass but I got it figured out. Then I doctored up the original alternator off of the Chief as it was still good and just needed some new wires. I got that all installed and as I was hooking it up to the Sparx one of the wires connectors came off exposing the wire. And the battery was still hooked up. And the wire grounded out on the chain guard. And I'm pretty sure it fried the Sparx.
Put it all together and fire it up and it sounded good! I went to put it in gear and as I'm pulling the lever I can feel and hear a
loud chatter in the cable/lever except at full engage and full disengage. I ride around the complex and it just doesn't sound or feel good at all.
I park it and go eat lunch come back out pull the primary cover to see whats up and saw the problem immediately. The new clutch basket bolts that Hitchcock's supplied had too big of a head on them and were hitting the scissor brackets as they were passing thru. So I pulled the bolts off one at a time and ground the heads down until they were about 5/16" thick and problem solved.
I got it put back together shortly before the sun started to drop for the day so I went for a short ride around the neighborhood. I have a totally different bike now!
COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED!!! First thing I noticed is how smooth the transmission shifts now! On a 30 minute ride I only had
ONE missed shift! I used to get missed shifts and false neutrals every other stop light. Also the trans shifts so smooth now and I can barely tell the gear engaged. NEXT, NO MORE SLIPPING! In fact the clutch now works beautifully and engages quite well and certainly disengages 100%. If I come off the clutch too fast it will actually squawk the tire. And of course the gearing. Just putting away from a stop it's a bit poochy if I don't rev it, I actually stalled it the first time.
But once it gets going it pulls so hard all the way thru 3rd! I didn't get on the highway but I can tell already that this is going to be a huge improvement. The gears run out so much longer and I still have plenty of torque to pull thru them. I used to run out of steam at 75mph and red lined at 92mph, I now hit 70mph before I even shift out of 3rd!
And 4th gear is more like actual overdrive now, I can't hardly use it in town because I'm barely over idle at 40mph.
I had some struggles, but I am very VERY happy with the results. As I mentioned, it's a completely different bike, and I am very pleased with the results of the clutch rebuild.
Oh, and how important is that big washer that goes over the crank bearing? It had fallen off of my parts tray and didn't make it's way back on the bike. I didn't even find the damn thing until I was done and cleaning up my mess.
Scottie J