New clutch plates... won't engage.

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Langley182

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The original idea was to fix the "hard to find neutral" problem according to the tech bulletin. When we opened up the clutch housing, my brother decided to get a new clutch pack. Here is what happened:
We bought new friction and slip plates from Sean (big thank you, btw). We removed the old plates, the half plate, the wire, and both rings from the clutch housing. We installed the new plates, starting with a full size friction plate then alternating. The pressure plate was installed with the dots lined up. Once the spring had been installed, the clutch lever would move the clutch and felt smooth. We reassembled everything and bled the line. When we went to start the bike, the clutch would never engage. If we started it in 1st gear the bike would lurch and if we started it in neutral and downshifted, then the bike would lurch and die.
We then decided to clean up the slave cylinder, which was terribly dirty. When we reattached everything and did a good bleed, the clutch lever was smooth and solid. But the clutch is still not engaging. What is going on? Did we mess something up when we installed the disks?
 
Isn't there a ball bearing and/or pushrod behind the frictions that has to be in place? Could some one of those components fallen out, or been left out of the re-assembly?

Part 23 on my fiche. Sorry, no way to tranfer a pic at this time.
 
I am the brother in question. The push rod never came out, so its still there. We double checked the presence of the ball bearing, which also was not removed in the first place. We have checked diagrams in the service manual and are confident all components are present.

Any other suggestions gentleman? :ummm:
 
The original idea was to fix the "hard to find neutral" problem according to the tech bulletin. When we opened up the clutch housing, my brother decided to get a new clutch pack. Here is what happened:
We bought new friction and slip plates from Sean (big thank you, btw). We removed the old plates, the half plate, the wire, and both rings from the clutch housing. We installed the new plates, starting with a full size friction plate then alternating. The pressure plate was installed with the dots lined up. Once the spring had been installed, the clutch lever would move the clutch and felt smooth. We reassembled everything and bled the line. When we went to start the bike, the clutch would never engage. If we started it in 1st gear the bike would lurch and if we started it in neutral and downshifted, then the bike would lurch and die.
We then decided to clean up the slave cylinder, which was terribly dirty. When we reattached everything and did a good bleed, the clutch lever was smooth and solid. But the clutch is still not engaging. What is going on? Did we mess something up when we installed the disks?

"The pressure plate was installed with the dots lined up".

I'm not saying it is, but it does sound like the plates are misaligned.

Same thing happened to me, & swore I had the dots lined up correctly. Pulled it back apart & sure enough I had a couple of the plates off.
 
"The pressure plate was installed with the dots lined up".

I'm not saying it is, but it does sound like the plates are misaligned.

Same thing happened to me, & swore I had the dots lined up correctly. Pulled it back apart & sure enough I had a couple of the plates off.


That was actually an issue we had the very first time we put it back together. When the pressure plate is misaligned, the bike will not go into gear at all. So we tore back into it, made sure the plate was lined up correctly, and tested the function before putting the cover back on.

So the issue we are having now is the exact opposite of that. Instead of not shifting into gear at all when the pressure plate was misaligned, the plate is now aligned with the clutch not engaging at all.
 
Update:

We've reinstalled the stock friction and slip plates and did the best we could to return the problem back to the original state when the issue was very minor. The same issue of lurching forward with the clutch pulled in is just as bad even in the original configuration.
 
The only suggestion I have left, and I'm speaking from past, personal experience on my 85, would be that you have a trapped air bubble in the lines. I fought this very (sounds same anyway) problem way back in 1987 when my bike was only a couple years old.......I had the lurching problem, and no amount of re-bleeding the system did any good what so ever. ON MINE, I found there to be a bubble of air sitting at the top of the lines at the point where the banjo bolt attaches to the handlebar master. NO AMOUNT of re-bleeding would completely remove that annoying bubble from my system. I could get maybe a decent enough pull on the clutch to go ahead and ride it, but the bike still wanted to jump when going into gear, and it was as if the clutch was not completely disengaging from the motor. But the clutch pull felt completely normal.

I covered my bike completely with rags (Dot 3 eats paint), and loosened the line @ the master and whoosh! air bubble be gone! After that, the clutch pull still felt completely normal, but also my clutch actually worked 100% again. I change my fluids annually. And there were subsequent years that my bike would do this very same thing again, and it turned out that I was being TOO conservative with my clutch fluid level when I changed each spring, and somehow the normal splashing would be allowing a bit of air back into my system, then the same thing would happen again. Each time, I found an air bubble at the top of the lines right next to the handlebar master, and normal bleeding proceedure would not get it completely out - perhaps I simply wasn't bleeding long enough. But air always works its way UP, and would end up at that banjo bolt every time.

You might try that, and see if there's a bubble of air there on your bike too.
 

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