Ducati Monster Forum

Hey guys,

So my clutch fluid was pretty old and looking rather black and crappy so I did a flush a few days back. No biggie, it was just like bleeding brakes. I ran quite a bit of fluid through to make sure I got a lot of the sludge that had settled in the resevoir over time. The whole procedure went rather smooth and my fluid was looking tip top. Now I know alot of you are screaming at your computer thinking this topis was just covered like 4 hours ago, but....

MY PROBLEM  ;) is that my clutch will not fully dis-engauge now. (cough cough) excuse my non-technical terms here. You know when your bike is in nuetral (with a dry clutch) the clutch spins freely making a whole mess of noise that us enthusiasts call music. Now, if you were to pull your clutch lever in and put the bike in 1st this music should continue until you begin to release the lever causing the pressure plate to move inwards putting pressure on the clutch plates. However, since my flush, my bike will spin the clutch freely in nuetral but once in gear the pressure palte stops spinning and there is a minimal amount of power being delivered to the wheel. This tells me that clutch is not dis-engauging all the way out when the lever is pulled in (correct me if I am wrong). Also, visually I can see that pressure plate is not moving outwards very far. This has made finding nuetral a real PITA for those of you that have not already guessed this.

So my question to you fine folks is what is that cause of this? Is it as simple as air in the master or the line, if so are there any good tricks when bleeding I should keep in mind? Or any other possiblities to the problem?

oh yeah A few quick notes.

I used DOT 4

My slave cylinder appears to be fine with no hydrolock occuring or leaks(and it does have the vent/pressure whole)

And it appeared to be pretty good before I screwed around with it, so I dont think i am in need of a new clutch (once again, correct me if i am wrong)

Thanks,
Heath

Pressure plate *should* stop spinning when the bike is in gear and not moving, as it is hooked to the rear wheel by the transmission.

Sounds like you've got air in the system.

OK... 0230 in the AM  [drink]

I got er beat. Bled the piss out of it for an hour or so with no results; actually after a while I felt like it was getting worse (pshycologically).

Anyways... When I was attempting to put some pazzo levers on last year after one too many beers I ended up forgetting to take the set screw out when trying to get the "push rod" off the lever that pushes against the master cylender piston; result equaling breaking said push rod. So I ended up making one. A beautiful piece of art it was and still is. However, when threading it in I never used any lock tight and it ended up backing put a bit resulting in less motion than normal when the lever was pulled on the way in. So I unscrewed it a few turns so it would be longer and lock tighted the hell out of it and she worlks like a hot damn. I doubt anyone else will ever have this problem, but hey, you never know.

Heath 

That's great.  I'm glad you got it solved.

And thank you for posting the resolution.   [thumbsup]

Way too many people post a question in tech and then never post what they end up finding out.

Drives me nuts when people get there fix and dont post it up. This is a community, not a 24 hour fix it call center  [laugh]