The Infamous XS Dragging Clutch

[dps650rider]

Has anyone ever found a permanent solution to the dragging clutch problem in the XS? By cleaning up the basket and the hub where they mesh with the plates I can make it work perfectly for a while... say 20,000 miles or so.

IMHO the biggest problem is wear at the hub where the relatively thin steel plates engage with the aluminum spline on the hub. It seems to me that if the spline could be replaced with steel so we had steel on steel instead of steel on aluminum it may eliminate this problem.

Anybody ever done this?

 

[TwoManyXS1Bs]

I've had similar thoughts. Seems that the plate fingers don't like climbing out of their groove 'troughs'. The early XS's had 2 special friction plates with an aluminum core, so the aluminum fingers wouldn't gouge the basket fingers as badly. Evidently, didn't work as planned, mine still showed some wear.

I've thought about hardened protective strips bonded to the drive side of the splines and fingers. Also thought about protective feet bonded to the frictions and steels that would widen the contact area and reduce the point loads. That would be a lotta feet to bond...