Did I ruin my clutch plates?

[zyhano]

The weather was good today and after a lot of commute-only kilometers I went out to have some fun on my striple and work on my riding skills.
Practicing slow manoeuvres, eigths, short turns, hard braking/stoppies and riding off from a stop with clutch wheelies in first and race starts on an empty industrial terrain... Good stuff (all safe, wife knows where I am and how late I'll be back, full gear on, empty place no obstacles)

I've done 33000 kilometers including 8 track days , twisties in the alps this summer and a lot of commuting and a lot of wheelies I must admit. Last two weeks I've been specifically working a bit on hard acceleration from stops, about six times a day where my commute allows it.

So after another race start after I did a couple in a short time frame today (I'm calling it like this because of a recent thread here..) I was riding along and breaking hard with the back brake to practice controlling back wheel slides. I stopped to check out the back wheel, which had melted rubber on it, hopped on again and then noticed that if I revved high I didn't feel a corresponding increase in acceleration.

The gas handle functions well, revving is as it should be. When I dump the clutch with high revs, the bike doesn't wheelie anymore.
When I just rev it up it seems that the bike is only slowly catching up with coming up to speed..like it lacks power. No immediate response.

I didn't change anything on the clutch cable, but tried some adjustments after I noticed this. Didn't have any effect.
I stopped the bike for about five minutes to let it cool down a bit cause I was already thinking it might be the plates (don't know if that's enough to cool down though) and nothing was changed. I was able to pull a powers wheelie but it wasn't as immediate as before.

No funny smell(oil) bike handles fine as it is, but in first and second there is no immediate response when I rev it. Just a slow increase in speed.

My assumption is that because I was putting a lot of stress on the clutch plates at the time that I somehow fried them.

I don't have any experience with this....

What do you think??

Are the glazed?

Can I drive on?

What should I expect to pay at the dealer?



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[shouldnthave]

It is possible you have killed the clutch, but more likely it only needs to be properly adjusted.

On the clutch leaver has asilver adjustment screws on the right of the leaver where the cable enters. Turn the large round 'screw' clockwise until the leaver has about 3MM of play (IE: the leaver moves about 2-3mm before the cable gets pulled far enough to begin engaging the clutch). See if that helps.

If not, you will need to pull the clutch housing and inspect the plates. I do not know how much this would cost to have someone do, I have always done my own clutches.

Good luck, and stop driving like a squid if you want to save your clutch.

[zyhano]

Thanks for the pointer.
Although I get you're not saying I am a squid, I don't think I'm driving like one either I'm trying to maintain skills like braking, clutch control and overall motor control :)
Of course there are other ways to practice those, but I prefer these ones at the moment

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[shouldnthave]

I'm glad you caught that I was teasing you.

[NakedSaturday]

My guess is your clutch wore out as I have experienced those same symptoms on my old bike. As for checking the wear on the plates, my old ones with 120km looked no different then the new ones I put in, but there was an immediate difference in feel at the lever and no sign of slippage.