Sounds like new friction plates would be a good investment for you. From my own experience with Barnett and others' reports on Energy One plates, you'd have at least as good if not better than OEM with those, and probably never have to do anything to the clutch plates again. Just remember that oil pre-soak; I let mine soak overnight. Barnett plates come with that instruction, too.
So I pulled the clutch tonight, the spacer was shot. Rivets were laying in the basket, but they looked like they came out when I pulled the frictions and steel plates out, so it was on it's way to grenading. Here's my concern, I can see a pretty well defined notch where it looks like one of the friction plates may have ridden hard against the basket, it's so defined that I thought they may come like that from the factory. After looking at pics, I am not so sure. Do these baskets have a notch anywhere? I can take pics.
The groove looks about where the spring plate would be, that and the material clumped up in that area makes me think without the rivets holding the pieces aligned, a plate shifted and the edge acted as a grinder. The cuts look shallow, doubt it would ruin the integrity/strength of the part, but since those splines hold the fiber plates in place, my concern would be are the grooves cut large enough to allow a fiber plate to slip through if one happens to line up right there? Since the plate tabs go a lot deeper than the the cuts, if none of the cuts go all the way through the metal, you still have plenty of grip and I would re-use it. The cut edges might feel sharp and irregular, and if they do, I'd smooth the edges with something like a dremel tool. Several guys have posted on the forum about grooves and rough edges from blown plates they've smoothed down and reused. Sounds like you caught it just in time if you can reuse all the basket parts, a completely rivet blown plate has required a new basket for some guys that have posted about it. I was real lucky with mine, the rivets were all very loose, but none had broken out yet.
If anyone sees something I missed, please correct me.
You can see there are no grooves/cuts in that area. These aren't my photos, found them on the internet.
Fiber plate tabs, you can see they fit all the way in the grooves well past the depth of the cuts in yours
So I pulled the clutch tonight, the spacer was shot. Rivets were laying in the basket, but they looked like they came out when I pulled the frictions and steel plates out, so it was on it's way to grenading. Here's my concern, I can see a pretty well defined notch where it looks like one of the friction plates may have ridden hard against the basket, it's so defined that I thought they may come like that from the factory. After looking at pics, I am not so sure. Do these baskets have a notch anywhere? I can take pics.
Grenade plate strikes again at 20k...
The groove is what I meant when I posted:
Originally Posted by cacomly
If you do have a groove in the clutch basket take a small file and file the rough edges off so the clutch plates move freely over it.
And of course be sure to get as much of the filings out as you can. I used a rag with some oil on it.
The groove is exactly where the grenade plate was, so you are spot on. I am going to file down the edges and see how the plates fit in there, your concern is mine exactly. What happens if one of the plates gets stuck there? Hopefully an unlikely event, but I was riding it up until then and didn't have any issues with the clutch disengaging, now that I will have an extra plate in there, could that actually happen and the clutch not disengage because a friction is stuck?
When I did mine at 32k, I had to file down the grove marks just to get the inner plates out.
After getting the plates out, filed some more to smooth it out. I replaced with a complete E-1 kit.
have had no problems since, 56k on her now.
the grove was not as wide as a plates.
Got the new clutch in last night, adjusted everything and tightened everything down. Feels so much better now, clutch pull is firmer and grabs way better than before.
Is there a "break-in" process? Since it's a wet clutch I'm thinking probably not?
I just rode mine normally and all was good, actually better, as you've experienced. Feeling better seems to be what most folks say after replacing most Harley parts with aftermarket; the smaller companies must try harder. Might be a good idea to replace the primary oil with the next engine oil change, could be some tiny debris flushed out of crannies after replacing the plates.
10-02-2019, 05:09 PM
