It seems lately that Hidalgo is wanting some TLC attention. It's been pretty steady ever since Son of Hidalgo came into the stable. I had figured she would become a little jealous of the attention being given to SoH so she is hinting of little 'aches and pains' to make me give her some fresh attention. I will oblige her.
The past few summers I have noticed that sometimes, especially on a very hot day and after a hard run, that the clutch would not engage quickly enough on heavy acceleration resulting in slippage. Once engaged the clutch seems to hold. The clutch disks have over 120,000 miles on them so they are suspect.
Today I gave the clutch assembly a thorough inspection and here's what I found:
All fiber disks were between 3.02-3.05mm (minimum thickness: 2.9mm)
All steel disks were 1.99mm No spec for them except for warpage. I didn't check that.
Clutch springs are all 34.0-34.20mm (minimum length: 33.1mm)
The clutch basket 'fingers' have some pretty deep grooves in them. I am *not* going to replace the basket at this time because the engine case must be 'split' to do it. (If anyone has a reliable way to clean up the grooves without removing the basket I would like to try it.)
Even though everything is still within specs I am concerned that the fiber disks may be hardening. I still have parts from the restoration donor bike, including the clutch, so I installed all the disks from its clutch (fibers and steels).
The pics attached are as follows:
Fibers: 120k vs 11k
- Fibers-small.JPG (73.94 KiB) Viewed 6779 times
Steels: 120k vs 11k
- Steels-small.JPG (67.8 KiB) Viewed 6779 times
Clutch basket finger wear 183k
- Basket Fingers-small.JPG (83.78 KiB) Viewed 6779 times
I'll go for a ride later, after the Honey-Do's, and report back.
Edit: Reporting back- After a quick ride around town everything seems to be in order. Shifting is a bit smoother too. Since summer seems to be winding down it may be a while before I know definitively whether this cures the slipping issue.
