After, once again, removing the footpegs and kickstarter cover on the CL72, I was able to tidy up things and get a look at the stator. From the last installment you may remember that I had no output on two of three stator AC leads, even though the stator appeared to be in very good condition overall. I can’t say that I had run across this particular problem before, but I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and split the two halves of the stator to see if there was anything obvious happening in there.
Well, as a matter of fact there was a lot going on in there. Someone had disassembled the stator previously and during reassembly of the “basket of snakes” loose wires running from coil to coil failed to keep the tiny, varnish-covered wires from becoming trapped between the two halves.
There were three separate locations where wires were smashed flat between the aluminum mount and the stator frame. I had to snip the dead sections out, clean and solder the ends back together and insulate them with some heat-shrink tubing. The pinched wires were grounding out the AC voltage being generated during engine operation, thus nothing coming out of the harness lead connectors.
Once the wires were all repaired and insulated, I then had to carefully reassemble the two halves, watching each and every wire to ensure that there was no repeat performance of the pinched wire syndrome. Once the two parts were bolted back together again, I could turn my attention to the kickstarter cover components. I switched out the “straight” cable joint for the angled one, then replaced the large, slotted clutch adjuster with a new one to minimize the free-play between the clutch lifter and the adjuster threads.
I reinstalled the kickstarter cover and left the adjuster loose, as I was turning my attention to the clutch cover side of the bike. I already had the fuel tank off to replace the throttle cable, so I was able to just do a “layover” of the whole bike onto an adjacent work table, leaving the machine at a 45 degree angle. I do this to prevent oil loss while I am working on that side of the motor. Out came the old hybrid 6 plate clutch setup and I decided to just use the late model inner clutch hub, which retains just the first plate and then one set of steel/friction plates, allowing the remainder to float free.
My earlier effort created several problems. Once was that the stack height of the whole clutch pack was taller than normal, which caused the clutch springs to be compressed excessively before the clutch lever was even pulled. Once the lever was pulled in, the clutch springs went into coil bind, stopping further spread of the clutch pack. With the previous two sets of trapped plates, there appeared to be too much friction and oil drag on the inner sets, causing the clutch to drag and create neutral finding issues.
I reset the pack using just one thin CB350 friction plate and then added in the thicker steel plates along with the normal 5-plate friction disks. I only used 5 sets this time and when I bolted it all back together, using the same springs, the lever pull effort was reduced and the clutch was spreading wide apart as designed. I felt confident that this setup would release and not slip, even with fewer plates, so buttoned it all back together again, replacing the fuel tank and seat for another test run.
AHHHHHH! This was just what I was hoping for; medium clutch pull, clean clutch plate release and no slipping! Success! After a couple of weeks of cleaning, machining, sourcing parts and finally pulling it all together again, the bike was just where I hoped it would be: Easy starting (usually one kick), nice crisp exhaust note, light controls at the levers and good power pulling through the gears.
Time to call the owner to come and pick this baby up and take it home again… One more for the road.
Bill “MrHonda” Silver
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