RIghto. Had a reasonably successful weekend. As Pontikat correctly pointed out... I never thought there was going to be much drama involved in dismantling this. I have taken a bunch of pics just in case any newbies want an illustrated guide to the bits and bobs. And yes, there was beer on hand.
Firstly you need to get the right hand side bodywork off and also the bellypan. The right side is retained by 7 screws, 3 normal sized allen key bolts and then 2 larger bolts found just near where your knee would sit and one down by your foot.
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Undo all the bolts and I suggest bunging them into a ziplock sandwiche bag and writing on there what the nuts are for. Once all the screws are out on that side you can remove the middle body panel. There are three plastic tabs as shown in the picture below, carefully unhook these and another tab at the bottom front of the middle piece where it meets the darker grey section.
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Now go around to the other side and undo the remaining bolts attached to the bellypan. You do NOT have to remove the left side middle piece... once all unbolted the bellypan should drop down as one piece. Slide this out and place off to one side where you are not going to tread on it. Sounds retarded but why risk it?
You should now be looking at the nude right side of the engine.
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I had already unhooked the clutch cable but if you haven't already, now would be a great time to be disconnecting it. You can see in the following shots the routing of the cable around the engine and that the clip connects onto one of the coolant hoses.
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The fun part (read messy if unprepared) is next on the cards. It's prudent to have a oil change pan underneath the bike for this bit. Slowly undo each of the 10 bolts that hold the clutch cover in place, I would advise starting at the top and working your way down. Once the bottom is loose you'll get a nice stream of engine oil running out... if you heeded my advice you will now have an oil pan filling with oil, if you didn't you will now have oil generally spilling all over the garage floor and more than likely all over your shoes. IMPORTANT! Take note of where the bolts came out of as there are 3 different sizes. There are 4 long ones, 1 medium one and 5 small ones. I noted them down but I didn't take a shot of my crudely drawn pic, i might bung that in later.
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Gently pull the clutch cover off and set aside somewhere where you won't a) scratch the surface of the case and b) where the oil from inside the cover won't leak onto something valuable ie don't place it on the deed to your house or your birth certificate... i recommend paper towel personally. You should now be looking at something similar to the pic below:
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You can have a look at the clutch cover now and I've taken shots to show where the washers and that should go for the actuator. Mainly for reference
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If you are lucky, like i was, you'll be able to undo the 6 allen bolts holding the clutch plates in place. Try and undo them evenly, I don't think that it's important but I figured I might as well let out the tension on the springs gently.
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Again, mainly for reference, I have noted how the washer and springs sit together in the clutch. This is obviously the same for all 6 of the spring/nut/washer combos.
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Remove the alloy plate holding all the clutch plates in the basket.
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Enlist the help of a friend to take pictures while you gently remove all the clutch plates from the basket in one lot. Again, the pic is for reference and I noticed something wrong here as well. According to the workshop manual the thicker spring plate should be the first thing in the clutch basket but for some reason whoever reassembled my clutch last time stuck a friction plate in the first... go figure. Can anyone confirm whether this is right/wrong?
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You can see the gunk buildup from the friction plates getting worn down in the gantries surrounding the clutch basket
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Just a quick shot of the bearing that sits in the clutch face plate
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Some more shots of the gunk from the friction plates, this time collecting on the inside of where the clutch springs sit
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Most of the friction plates still had a good deal of meat on them, as you can see on this particular plate:
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But two of the plates were completely smooshed and had barely any friction surface left... you can see the carnage in the below two shots:
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Now I was expecting some catastrophic thing to instantly draw attention to what had actually gone wrong. Looking at the two damaged plates didn't gel with what I had experienced... I hadn't noticed any clutch slippage or anything leading up to the stalling... sure my clutch was on the way out but when things wear out they then to go gently and this was working...working... NOT WORKING. So I consulted the workshop manual and after looking back over my pics I found the issue. The spindle that comes out of the clutch and hooks into the actuator... compared to the one in the book mine appear to be missing the end. This is definitely in keeping with what I experienced. So I'm going to bung in a new clutch anyways since I already have the bike apart and I'm looking to keep her for a long time... and I need a new spindley thing. The only bummer is that I'm going to have to drop the sump to find the chunk of metal that broke off the end of the spindle... which in turn means removing the exhausts since I can't drop the sump with the exhausts in place.
So until my next update... if anyone has some hints and tips bung em up... otherwise... as you were
3 months. 3 FSCKING MONTHS!