Refurbishing your clutch.

There has been some postings from guys about wanting to replace their clutches. In MOST cases this is not necessary because Kawasaki clutches hardly ever ware out in regular riding. I have had the same clutch in one of my KZ1300s for more miles than most guys will put on their bikes in a lifetime of riding. If you drag race your bike and you have a large CC bike this may not be the case. In the next two days I will do this thread with pictures on how to "Refurbish" your clutch plates. I have had to do this with my GPz1150 because I ran into the same problems (if not worse) that some of you may have run into and also was contemplating replacing it. When I rebuilt my engine I used copious amounts of assembly lube which had Moly in it and that can be disastrous for a wet clutch. When I pulled the clutch apart I did two things. First I measured the tension of the springs on a spring force gauge and than I measured the clutch plate thickness. What I found out was that the clutch springs were way under spec, and the clutch plates were only .05mm under NEW specification. But because I used the Moly I had a problem. You see Moly and Grapheme will embed itself into the clutch pads and will make them slip. So at this point I decided to try and recondition them. I figured that i had nothing to loose and $100 to gain. After I did so and resembled the clutch I pleasantly found out that it worked perfectly.

So at this point I would like to share with you my process and save you the $100 or so for the new clutch.

OK now I think I have all of my pictures together for this thread.

First of all you must measure the individual clutch plates. This is a plate from a "J" motor that is 3mm new. I bought this clutch set on eBay for about $12 and the bike was supposed to have 32K on it.

First thing I did was to measure the plates. They all measured out about the same. The spec on these was 2.8mm minimum 2.9-3.1mm NEW. They all measured as you can see at about 2.97 +/- .02 mm not bad for 32,000 miles on the used clutch, and $12.

Next thing I did was to gather a good water based degreaser. I really like this product from ZEP and it can be bought at Home Depot for about $10@ Gal. I use it for everything including washing my engine and rear wheel from the chain lube.

Using the ZEP full strength I soak the clutch plates for about an hour.

Now I take my "Scotch Brite" pad which I cut up into little squares.

Now using a little elbow grease, I scrubbed the full side of each disc using half of each little scrub pad square.

When finished with one side I flip both the clutch plate over and the scrub pad and do the other side.

Once finished with all plates I rinse them off with water and they are finished.

i now do the same thing with the steel plates. DO NOT USE SANDPAPER on the steel plates. They are made out of very hard steel and the sanding marks will stay in them for a long time. THEY WILL ware out your friction plates if you do. I am running a lot of ponies in my 1150 and have NO SLIPPAGE in the clutch doing it the way I just outlined.

I guess I better ad this little tidbit, When you buy new steel clutch disks they are smooth and have little dimples in them. But they are smooth. If you do anything to make them rough, they will greatly shorten the life of your friction plates. Remove the glaze only using the Scotch Brite. Don't try to out think the engineers that designed that clutch. You will wind up buying new clutch plates AND new friction discs. If you want better grab, get stronger clutch springs. They make those from 40# to 80# load. More than you could ever use, and you wont destroy your clutch. Just remember, "anything that will make your steel plates feel like sandpaper will make them ACT like sandpaper".

Glass bead them all, metal and fiber!
Put them back together!
Twist it up and hole shot it!

Perfect timing as I'm having some slipping post rebuild as well! Thanks, Otakar!