Why does ducati clutch rattle

Because the engine is cold, the pixies shiver and chatter their teeth. It's pretty much classified as to the amount of pixies ducati commision to build and inhabit one particular engine, but there must be a butt load to be making that amount of noise.

Once it gets warm, or if the rider turns the throttle, the pixies inevitably get pissed off because they are a trapped b annoyed that they got woken from their dormant state c incredibly pissed off that they are cold and are chattering their teeth. So all the clafairies and jigglypuffs trapped within the engine protest and and roar in anger, and this sound is often vented by nicely crafted termignoni can's, again the crafty handiwork of the pixies.

It's not "Ducati's" rattle. Stop trying to keep up!!! Use of biting point half clutch of dry clutch is difficult? If your rating is revoked you will lose karma Have you read the ratings guide? Read the Terms of Use! Resend my activation email : Register : Log in.

That Ducati rattle. Goto page 1 , 2 Next. View previous topic : View next topic. Dan 4RR. This post is not being displayed. Posted: - 28 Feb Post subject: That Ducati rattle. Back to top. You must be logged in to rate posts. Posted: - 28 Feb Post subject:. Luke wrote:. Dan 4RR wrote:. Cons: They rattle like a bitch! Zimbo wrote:.

My heavily Modified - read paid Gowie's property in Goulburn Paso had the same clutch for as I would wash it all in Handy Andy and hot water every K's every oil change as the fairing would come off then so it was squeaky clean.

I never seemed to keep a bike alive long enough since But I told a few other Dry clutch people and they do it too. So now I haved shared this with you. PS at 60, my clutch still looked like new and I did burnouts and fannned it out of corners - generally abused the hell out of it, treated like my CR chook chaser's clutch.

I could generally take off without the shudder or noise etc from the lights too. The late Multi never made it past K's but then it was quiet so I never looked at it. The 12Multi was wet so again never tried it, the S4 died when it was 2,Ks old but if it had survived I would have used Handy Andy on it too. I was just looking for something else and found this article again. So you are just riding along in gear and hammering the crap out of the clutch components.

If you do the mod when you let the clutch out the plates actually stop all over the place, some at one end of the freeplay and others at the other, so basically there is no clearance and the push-pull thing doesn't happen on throttle changes and this eternal smashing of bits becomes history.

As long as you are not a high rev take-off kinda rider you will see , km plus out of a standard clutch you did this mod with, otherwise it is a rare case that gets much past 35,00km off a standard set-up. I also mentioned in the article the possibility of modifying the STM slipper clutch. This was going to be done by using the small springs that older style car ignition distributors use for centrifugal advance of the spark.

However I didn't think these quite small springs could be securely fitted in a way that I was absolutely sure would never interfere with the proper operation of the clutch, so I abandoned the idea. The basket lasted about 25,km before becoming too noisy however the plate to inner hub only had light wear so I have a new basket now and this will go into a race bike project "some day". The only issue I have found is that every 5,km or so they need to be dismantled and cleaned as the spline gets a bit sticky with the consequential effect that sometimes the clutch never re-engages after a gear change.

It is quite startling when this first happens on the road, one soon figures out that a fast rev dislodges the stuck bits thanks to inertia and the maintenance can be put off to a convenient time. Otherwise in operation the clutch is brilliant, with a nice light pull on the clutch lever as a bonus. Oh look, I have just discovered there is a write-up of this in Ducati.

The suggestion is made when using two plates to use the early model steel ones which are stiffer than the later model aluminium ones as installed in the ST4S per below. But Brett's WD40 is a pretty neat solution too Brett Pack Leader Posts: G'day Vince, That's a a good article and well done.

I actually use a much simpler response to queries on the noisy clutch. I quickly explain that I use WD40 instead of engine oil, as it creates far less drag and less drag is, as everyone knows, more perfomance. It usually ends a conversation I never wanted to have in the first place, right where it started. Although it did create an awkward moment at my rego check on Saturday.

Not sure I'll be able to go back there, which is a shame Of course, to many this racket is an integral and attractive part of owning a Ducati, I am not talking to you here, OK For me having something flog itself to death just because enough attention to detail was not put in to the base design is pretty inexcusable. Fortunately, it can be fixed readily by those with only a moderate level of mechanical skill.

You will also note that for the many aftermarket clutch kits available in different forms it is pretty normal to see that this issue has been addressed in amongst whatever the other features are provided. However, because I have understood this issue well for a long time and it became topical again on the weekend I have now got an idea how to fix the noise from my slipper too, may put that up if it works. Check back here in a while and see if it turns up! I then found that the bike was quiet for sure, but increasingly I found it would sometimes stall on takeoff just after moving off, not operator error, and typically in the m zone - which of course sometimes puts you smack in the middle of the traffic!

I really wasn't getting straight answers about this so I pulled the clutch to pieces and did the engineering analysis thing on it. The really short story it was a poor solution basically due to lack of attention to detail and it was designed to cause this fault.

Rather than changing the procedure to make it a safe modification as I expected, what Frasers did was black banned the practice to all dealers in Australia.

So blame me if you have been told these clutches cannot be quietened down any more! But in fairness this is the only administratively practical response However, I have now realised this all happened back in mid and I know how to fix it properly and cheaply, but it is probably a bit of a secret to most. But not any more - please remember that it might be easy to do right, but it was being done very wrong and Frasers didn't ban the practice without good reason, so proceed at your peril.

This is your choices, not any advice from me that is happening here, what you do with the info is up to you, and that includes ANY consequences. OK, disclaimer now done those of you who have some mechanical nous and are well capable of thinking for yourselves you will not find this hard, and it is comfortably done in an hour start to finish. I once worked out why this happens, it is OK - but can't remember what the reason was now to tell you!

I do remember figuring out that it is sensible to adjust the clutch lever closer to the bar so it only just disengages, as this itself also changes the clutch lever effort — when you study the bits you can see that the mechanical advantage changes as the lever comes in, it is like a mini-power booster effect and is available to anyone to use purely by adjusting the lever a little closer to the bar. I am not going to write up a full technical description of the clutch de-rattle procedure, just what I think of for now.

What you need to do to start is to buy two standard steel clutch plates used ones are just fine, as long as they are flat to 0. This is a steel clutch plate about 3mm thick ie about double a standard one and has friction material on one side.

Maybe somebody will kindly find out and post the part number at the website above. Anyway, I would also note that, when I did this conversion to the M I was a slack tart and simply doubled up two standard old friction rings in lieu of the Paso plate and this has worked perfectly well for at least 10,km now.

I also had the Paso plate mod on the standard ST4S clutch for about 50,km before swapping to the slipper, and that was to get the safety features of the slipper, not because there was any issue with the old clutch. What happens with a standard clutch is the assembly of plates sits against a rim on the bottom of the inner hub. Ducati says the maximum slop here should be 0. At least this mod will greatly slow the rate of further deterioration, but it won't eliminate it, after all these parts have to press pretty solidly on each other to generate our fun!

The clutch modification, whilst there are a couple of important details, is essentially as simple as taking the plates out, dropping the Paso plate in steel side first and then putting all the plates back and adding the steel ones to the top to make up the stack height so that the pressure plate doesn't bottom out on the hub.

What happens is the Paso plate gets trapped in a fixed place relative to the basket and therefore in order for any of the rest of the plates to rattle they have to slip from wherever they happened to stop, and they won't be doing that as they are no longer bottoming out on the inside end of the hub! So the noise is totally eliminated, peace at last -now we can simply enjoy the exhaust note, ah bliss!

The comments you got from the other members are also right; that the friction plates are also hitting the outer drum at idle, even the plate stack is compressed by springs. Therfore it will be 2 sources making noise. My bike; a Monster S4RS, do have the same engine as the s, and the increased valve lift on these engines demands large valve clearances. On this engine the heads are pretty noisy too due to that. All of it adds up to a pretty high "music" at idle.

It might be OK, but "unnessesay" noise could be reduced. I have done some work at the clutch and made devices in the bottom of each recess for the friction plates, so that the inner friction plate is just about resting to a fixed surface in the drum. This solution is giving a slight inward pressure to the drum, which is then trusting inwards on the bearings.

This is "settling" the inner side of the visible notches on the inner friction plate towards the drum, so that they do not freely go back and forth at each firing pulse. I have like 0. Going higher will disturb he contact point towards the plate stack as the frictionplate is resting to the fixed point will be distorted a little. BUT, i wish to ask if anyone of you have ever tried to remedy the primary drive gear backlash.

I have done some research, and what I find is that the Ducati engines with wet clutch do have a split primary front sprocket. There is a spring loaded section to take up the the dead clearance. On most of the Ducati models, this gear do have a conical fit to the crank, and a replacent gear from fixed to springloaded is easy to find, like the one on the GT However, my S4RS do have a spline fit for this gear, and the only bike that seems to have the same spline, and spring damping is the Diavel.

On this one, the primary gear ratio is the same too. As I now have got a fairly good dampning of the friction plate hammering, the backlash is very well audible, and I recon this would be the right step to go further. Any others messing around with something similar, or converted conical fit gears?. And I agree with you; leave the "love or hate the clutch noise debate" to a separete tread. This is a very interesting technical matter.

Ride safely, lymo. FOOKIN hell lads fair play to you, I just ride mine and get baffled when shims clearances and split primary stuff comes into it. Suggest louder exhaust reqd. Hola Lymo, just stumbled across your post.

I was searching for something specific on the primary back lash issue.