QuestionI'll ty to be as thorough as possible here to give you an idea of what I am facing. Sorry in advance if I go a little overboard.
I recently purchased a '74 1000cc Ironhead Sportster. The gentleman I purchased the bike from rebuilt the thing from three baskets of parts. New gaskets, seals, evrything all the way through. It still has less than fifty miles on the rebuild as I am still in the process of dialing everything in; ironing out wiring issues, tweaking the carb, etc.
Yesterday I was giving it another spin, everything going smoothly, shifting, accelerating, stopping fine. As I was coming up a short hill, I shifted into second. The bike acted not exactly like the clutch was slipping, but more as if the clutch hadn't disengaged all the way. I got her to the top of the hill and pulled over. Shut her down and let the bike cool down. When I went to restart, the bike wouldn't move at all when I put it in gear and released the clutch.
After getting it home, I have shifted through the gears and can feel each gear engaging with a nice satisfying 'chunk' in the exact manner it did before the problem ocurred. Here's the thing, even in gear the bike would roll freely as if it was in neutral. Same thing whether the clutch was pulled in or left out. This got me hopeful that if anything was dead it was the clutch rather than the transmission.
Taking preliminary steps, I removed the primary cover to begin investigating. Everything came apart easily. There were no metal shavings or any other foreign matter in the primary lubricant or in the case. I then released the cover all the way with the clutch cable still attached.
I went to move the bike forward to avoid the little bit of lubricant that I hadn't caught in my pan. I had left the bike in gear, but seeing as how it had rolled freely before, I figured leaving it in would give me a chance to see what was binding or stuck. As I shoved forward, the bike didn't roll! So, the gear was engaged.
On surface appearance, everything looked okay. I decided to go with that old standby of addressing the simplest solutions and working my way forward from there. Perhaps the cable had simply bound was my thinking. Making sure that everything was in it's place, I loosely reattached the cable and the cover and gave her a push with teh bike in gear. Rolled freely.
This is as far as I have gotten and am basically wondering where I go next? Am I going to have to buy a new $1000 clutch? Should I buckle down and take it to a Harley mechanic and start paying the $75/hour? I'm a decent shadetree mechanic , but this is the first Harley I've ever owned/attempted to wrench on.
Any advice on steps going forward would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, and sorry again for the novel here, I just wanted to be sure I covered everything possible.
AnswerIt appears that the clutch is engaged when you have the cover on, so the problem sounds like inthe clutch. I would go ahead and take the clutch apart and do an inspection on it, to see what the plates look like. Once you do that, and the plates look ok, then put it back together. Take the adjustment out of the cable so its loose. when installing the cover make sure the clutch cable is pushed to the rear of the cover, so the clutch acuator is all the way back. Now adjust the clutch and then the cable
Let me know what you find
Mike
