Clutch dragging?

[Windjammer]

Performing some long overdue preventative maintenance on my '05 this week.

On my bike, the clutch has always seemed a little bit sticky. Not a huge deal, but enough so that if the bike were up on centerstand and you pulled in the clutch and dropped into first gear, the rear wheel would spin while holding the clutch in. I could stop the rear wheel with the rear brake, but once the brake was let loose the rear wheel would start rotating again. All of this with the clutch held in the whole time.

As part of the aforementioned overdue maintenance, I bled the clutch for the first time. The fluid was full, and not all that dirty. But I was surprised to see quite a few air bubbles come out during bleeding. And once bleeding was complete, no more wheel spin with the clutch pulled in.

Prolly the system wasn't bled properly at assembly. Just something to watch for.

WJ

 

[FJRBluesman]

Rear wheel usually spins slightly regardless of clutch drag. Glad you did your maintenance though.

 

[JamesK]

As FJRBluesman said, the rear wheel usually will spin slightly on shaft driven bikes.

I think the air bubbles you saw were actually the result of the bleeding, and not an indication of the system having air.

 

[Windjammer]

It sounds odd, I know. I've had shaft drive bikes before, and had the (slight) wheelspin thing. However, on my FJR it always seemed more pronounced, and I always got a bit of a lurch when shifting from neutral to first. Took a test ride over the weekend and the clutch is much more "positive" for lack of a better word.

I always install a tight fitting clear plastic hose over the bleeder valve, then pressurize the line (in this case pull the clutch in) and THEN crack the bleeder screw. Bubbles of about 1/8" diameter came out right from the start and continued to do so until the fluid came through clean. So I'm pretty sure the air was in the system and wasn't there from the bleeding process.

Anyway, the point in posting this was to let folks know they could try bleeding the clutch if they had issues with it. Partly because it worked for me and partly becasue it's one of the cheapest and easiest things to service in the clutch system. Do the easiest stuff first, right?

Which is exactly why I waited so long to do it