Had a new spare set of oem friction(which had already been soaked in oil) & clutch plates so decided to swap the old plates out this evening rather than the weekend...
Upon removing the clutch cover I saw lots of small friction material splattered on the inside the cover and after taking the plates off, on the fingers of the clutch basket also. Upon examining the friction & clutch plates the lowest friction plate (the one nearest the engine) had munched itself and the clutch plate was black. The next 3 plates had hardly any oil on them and would be considered dry. The remaining plates 50/50 dry and oily.
Looking at the clutch basket and hub its obvious the previous owner/s were very heavy on the clutch, there is wear on the basket fingers and hub that I have only ever seen at 50k
Bbefore removing the clutch cover I checked the oil level and that was on the hi mark in the sight class. The clutch hub had its blanking plug (Im sure I read on here somewhere that if that was missing that would cause dry plates etc). And there was oil on the clutch hub and basket, cover and engine casings.
So a couple of questions spring to mind -
- what would cause the plates to become so dry..? and why was the one nearest the engine the only one to properly munch itself?
- would starting the bike on the side stand over a prolonged period of time prematurely dry the plates out so that during the course of normal operation they would never become wet enough. This is my 4th Fazer 1000 and I cant remember having any issues with regard to which stand it was on over night, but conversely the previous 3 thou's were used every day.
- With the bike on the center stand the oil lever in the sight glass drops below the glass, I know this is normal but is it advisable to have the oil level at the top of the glass to make sure the clutch gets enough oil..? or am I barking up the wrong tree with that train of thought?
- And lastly as we are all aware the friction plates are in a certain order, a thin skinny plate at the bottom along with two anti-judder rings, then 3x thin plates and then 5 thick plates. My question is whats with the numbers on the tangs on the 5 outermost friction plates..? On the old ones I removed there were 2 numbers 12 and 383, yet the new ones I replaced them with has 11/383 on four and 12/383 on the last outermost one. Is it possible the old plates were wrong..?
Some pics of the plates -
![](http://i.minus.com/ibbNcelqMHc02M.jpg)
![](http://i.minus.com/ibmttW45rmeWPi.jpg)
![](http://i.minus.com/iZT4WJTVuAXsR.jpg)
![](http://i.minus.com/iTG9WrZowV1c6.jpg)