Gen1 pressure plate falling off...

[hayabuser]

I started having some clutch slippage and chattering issues so I took the cover off today to find that 4 of the 6 spring bolts were loose on the pressure plate, 1 of which was barely threaded in anymore. Yikes!

No wonder it was making noise! Are these lock-tighted from the factory? There was a tiny amount of white residue in the threads but hardly enough for a proper lock-tighting.

Everything looks OK inside but since I've got it all apart, I'm changing the disks/steels/springs anyway. The bike just turned 59,000kms so I'm sure it could use some fresh parts. I ordered a Barnett kit instead of the Suzuki kit since it was 1/2 the price ($224 vs. $421 Cdn.). Plus the three-week oil synthetic oil was pretty dark leading me to believe that it was carrying a lot of worn friction material from the slipping clutch disks.

So any hints or tricks for reassembling all of this? i have the factory service manual on CD-R but I'm sure someone here has some wisdom to share that's not in the book.

 

[VANNWRAY]

I did a Brocks clutch mod that called for LocTite.It only had 1500 miles and everything looked fine so i'm probably not much help.Good luck , somebody ought to chime in on the factory parts.

 

[Nicholas]

make sure u soak the friction plates in oil for awhile before u install, alot of people say that barnett clutches suck and that oem is the best plates, but thats what everyone that ive talked to said, but goodluck with ur setup, make sure u follow the manual directions for the clutch

 

[Commuta_Busa]

always locktite those bolts

 

[Nicholas]

always locktite those bolts

+1 if u dont locktite them u might see this one day, not the one u want.

 

[maddog03]

I've seen this way to often. And No the factory does not always use thread locker on the spring studs. You should clean and dry the spring studs, use high strength "Red Locktight" on the studs. Note that depending on your application Barnett clutches may not last as long as OEM clutches.

 

[hayabuser]

+1 if u dont locktite them u might see this one day, not the one u want.

::11 omg!!! ::11

 

[hayabuser]

make sure u soak the friction plates in oil for awhile before u install, alot of people say that barnett clutches suck and that oem is the best plates, but thats what everyone that ive talked to said, but goodluck with ur setup, make sure u follow the manual directions for the clutch

Now that I've put ~500miles on the new clutch, all seems well. I will say that the Barnett clutch pack makes more noise than the stock parts though... at idle with the clutch engaged in neutral, the stack rattles in the basket pretty loudly. The noise mostly goes away when I pull the clutch in. Grabs tight though with no slip or chatter. Noise deminishes when the oil heats up. Definitely louder on cold start up.

Made sure to locktite the pressure plate bolts even though the FSM doesn't say to.