classic motorcycle forum

My mind was mush after work today, so some time in the workshop was due.

I stripped the clutch back again to try to figure out where that slackness was coming from.

Everything seemed to be good and tight, both the adjuster lock nut, and the clutch main nut. There's no movement on the layshaft (well - a tiny tiny bit which is commensurate with allowing it to spin freely, obviously) .

I fiddled about a bit - tried the new min nut with the seal - definitely need a longer push rod to use that!

Then set about reassembling anything, including faffing about trying to find a tool to hold the clutch while I did up the main nut. Even got in touch with a mate to chat about the tool he mentioned when we were nattering at Boxhill yesterday, may end up buying on at some point, but for today I   ended up using the c-spanner i used when doing the rubbers and it worked ok for holding the main clutch body.

For getting the adjuster screw lock nut tight, ideal you'd have 3 or 4 arms to hold the screw, and the clutch basket tight while getting the lock-nut tight, because the whole clutch tends to turn with it when you try to tighten the locknut.  Sorted it out in the end, with roughly the correct clearance on the actuating lever/push-rod.



Got it all sorted and in making the last final adjustments to the handlebar lever I realised what a muppet I'd been.

This adjuster:


I realised that when I was out on the bike and trying to make quick adjustments to the clutch play... I'd been loosening the damned thing, not tightening it!! FFS!  THAT'S where the play in the cable had come from!!

If it's dry tomorrow I'm taking it out again.

Clutch? Gears? Over-complicated.

I'm with Rex on this one - don't overthink it. 1/2-20 on a British bike will be BSCy, an alternate to the usual 1/2-26. UNF is also 1/2-20 but with a slightly different thread form.

Leon

did some measuring tonight to figure out what's going on....

the new pressure plate adjuster is 5/8" long (when measured from the bottom of the screwdriver slot! )


From some reading I've done... there's actually a long one supposedly available at 7/8" length.  Hmmm.

It's a 20tpi thread


And it measures at 0.491" diameter, which is as close to 1/2" as makes no odds (to me).  BSC??

I also checked the clutch lever pivot distance - it's supposed to be 7/8" to give the correct leverage, and it seems to be correct.


The Push rod however, is a bit of a mystery.
It's a 6mm diameter (exactly), so it's a "modern" one.
the length though.. is 8 15/16"  (228mm). 


Which is... err... rather shorter than anything I've so far found.
Supposedly the nominal length is 9 11/16" or 9 1/2", or 9.752, or 9.68", or 9.80"....

I think it depends on what people seem to have found in their box!

But, all those measurements are 9" +  So my push rod would indeed appear to be too short, so I'll look into a replacement I think, just to be sure that the rod is properly long enough to protrude enough from the tube it lives in. 

I also spent some time fiddling with the actuator lever trying to figure out if it's gone weird.. but I can't make it out - there's a weird "double-movement" that I'm feeling when I try it with my finger on the end of the push rod.  hmmmm.. odd. (but possibly correct?)

more thinking required.

I managed to get an hour in the shed on Sunday, and the rest of the clutch bits had turned up from Andover Norton.

New, (straight!) studs


Adjuster screw and locknut


The first thing in the clutch assembly (after the rubbers and the outer plate) is a tiny bit of "anti-centrifugal grease" on the clutch bearing.... I couldn't find any information on what constitutes "anti-centrifugal grease", so I dug out the high-temp lube I use for brake pads etc.  I'm going to use an extremely small amount, so I figure that all it needs to be is capable of withstanding high temps and not flinging.

The bearing "inner" is the outer diameter of this plate:


Told you I wasn't going to use much.... (actually I used twice that...)


Bearing half-assembled


Studs into the clutch body: they're keyed to semi-squared holes in the bearing race plate so they don't rotate.


Assemble the rest of the body, and don't drop it....




BUGGER!


Try again.
Lastly fit the stud nuts on the back


Clutch body onto gearbox layshaft with washer, lockwasher and big nut


Big nut is the same size as a spark-plug


Again, without having the proper clutch holding tool, I have to resort to using the rear brake to lock the layshaft (via the final drive and gearbox)


I bet myself I could get the stack on in one go.... YAY!


Then I freed off the clutch cable as far as it would possibly go to give myself plenty of slack to work with while getting the setup right.  Ideally, the lever in the gearbox needs to be "over-center" so that the cable pulling it has plenty of room to work.  That means the lever need to be as far away from the gearbox inner as you can get it.


Lots of slack...


Even more slack - from freeing off the handlebar-lever adjuster


The push rod is now a "long" way into the layshaft when "at rest"


And the lever is as far "out" as it will go (probably too far tbh!)


Then fit the pressure plate, spring cups, springs, spring nuts.  The advice is to screw the spring nuts down until they are "flush"


What is supposed to happen next is that you adjust the screw on the pressure plate and the clutch cable adjusters so that although you have a bit of slack (either 1 or 1/2 turns back on the pressure-plate adjuster: advice varies) to allow for thermal variation, and the clutch lever has a nice pressure on the clutch.  Bearing in mind that the push-rod lever needs to be "over-center" and not fouling the inspection cover.

However... to get any where near that state, I had to screw the adjuster screw in so far, that the lock-nut wasn't going to work: even this wasn't engaging the push-rod.


Obviously, with a pressure plate that's about 1/4" deeper than I had before... I need more length in the rod (ooer), or some other way of taking up that gap in the mechanism.

At least enough to give the locknut a fighting chance... It should look like this.


Obviously it took me a few minutes to puzzle that out though, I thought I'd gone mad.

The last thing I did was pull the push-rod out again... and it's covered in oil.


Which confuses the hell out of me - I'm sure I put it back in clean, and the oil is fresh clean stuff, (obviously, since I changed the oil) so - given that the layshaft tube is much higher than the oil-level in the gearbox and the mods I've done are supposed to stop this... the only conclusion is that my mods didn't work. BAH!

I may look at fitting a larger diameter breather , or possibly just drilling out the jet that's fitted (off the gearbox, obvs).  but the sheer amount of oil on the layshaft is really confusing to me.  The way the oil supposedly gets in there is a "oil-mist" when the box is hot and the internal pressure pushes the air/oil mist in there out of whatever exits it can find: the clutch cable is one exit, the push-rod-tube is another, and the blow-hole on the original inspection cover is a third. The idea of fitting the extra breather is to increase the number of exits and so reduce the propensity of the oil-mist to  get where it shouldn't (down the push-rod-tube!).

These clutches do normally, ie, by design, run in an oil bath (the original primary cases on Nortons contain an amount of oil (Not sure huow much, and it seems ATF is preferred, makes sense), mainly to lube the primary chain, so any gearbox oil lost down the push-rod-tube probably isn't really noticeable.  But I'm running this clutch dry (although I think it's got plates that "should" be ok runing wet), so the oil seepage is a lot more noticable, and I was thinking that it may have been what caused the slipping - although I'm beginning to wonder if the oil seepage was just incidental and not the main cause of the slippage.


So, steps in the right direction, and yet more choices to make.

Regarding the push-rod, I'm thinking that tbh, the easiest way to fix this is going to be a longer pressure-plate adjuster screw, so I'll be taking measurements and seeing what I need to find to achieve that.   
Oddly - ther appears to be 2 options for this, but I've only found this reference in one place (so far).

040360: Adjuster, in press. plate. All. Short (5/8”).
061179: Adjuster, in press. plate. Long (7/8”) Norvil, Dom, Comm

So - I'll look into that.

Some advice I've read is to put a 1/4" ball-bearing down the tube as a "spacer/extender", and I may look into that if I can find one in all the junk I've got.  There's already a ball-bearing as part of the push-rod-lever :


Again - an option.

So, plenty to keep me busy....