Bedding a clutch in

[Raveydavey]

just fitted the 5 plate surflex kit from camlam. Kit includes springs top plates, steels. Fitting was straight forward, 1 to 2 mm clearance when compressed. When I bought it they told me it would need bedding in for about 100 miles. I forgot to ask what that actually means. First ride out on it today and noticed clutch slip when any real load is applied. Is this because it's not "bedded in"?

Fitted loads of 4 plate clutches in the past and never had this before. Cable has couple of mm play. Setup seems right.

Is this normal?

[Storkfoot]

Are they green plates? If yes, have you used light gear oil? Did you "soak" the plates beforehand (you don't really need to soak these green ones but you do need to smear oil over the surfaces)? What sort of power are you putting through this clutch?

In my experience, a clutch will either work or not and the "bedding in" should be just 2 or 3 miles, not a hundred.

I use these plates but have often had to put different thickness steels in to get them working right. With all the different tolerances in the many clutch components, you can't assume that these clutches will work straight out of the packet. In my experience, they are good clutch plates though.

Lastly, MDB clutch springs work well with these plates, again in my experience .

[Raveydavey]

Cheers storkfoot. Yes these are the green plates and did soak them, even though they didn't need it. I did check the thickness of the whole kit compared to the nearly new 4 plate I'd taken out and found this 5 plate kit was 1 mm thinner overall. So your suggestion of different steel thicknesses is probably what I need to look at. Do you think it would be ok to mix different steels / thicknesses?

[Storkfoot]

Yes, it is. Don't use the 1.0mm ones unless you absolutely have too. They are just a bit too thin and are prone to easily turning over at the edges. 1.2 and 1.5 are good and it is good practice to keep a few in your supplies

[jonno]

Got a camlam 6 plate and used a mixture of standard steels and the ones that came with the kit,to get things right.

[Raveydavey]

I'm pretty sure the steels are the issue. Luckily I have a few of different sizes. I'm going to try and get to this tonight. I will let you know the outcome.Cheers.