In preparing my 954 for the upcoming drag race season I have been doing every little maintenance item I can think of so my bike will be ready to race by the end of this month. Last March I installed brand new clutch fibers and plates. My old clutch was still within spec at 33k miles but I replaced it anyway knowing how much racing I planned to do last year. The outer basket and center had some deep scoring marks on them so during the year I picked up a brand new outer basket and center. Instead of installing them last year I said I would try and finish the season with the old ones and replace them before next year.

I had no problems with my bike during the entire race season. Actually the bike ran better as the season went on and I ran some of my fastest times during my last 2 events. My bike has been in storage since late October until Saturday.

On Saturday I decided to go ahead and change out the clutch basket and center. Well I got a surprise when I began to remove the fibers and plates. As you can see in the pic below the 4th fiber was broken into 8 pieces. At this point removing each steel had me nervous about seeing the fiber behind. Everything seemed ok until the last fiber and it was broken into very small pieces. Lucky for me these broken fibers were deep enough in the stack that even though they were broke the pieces could not fall out and cause other problems.

This made me realize that just because my bike is running good it can still have a problem. Now with every oil change I will be pulling off the clutch cover and removing the clutch to inspect all the fibers and plates.

I doubt many others will have this happen but it never hurts to check them. I caused mine from very hard launches at the drag strip.

 

Whoa. That's insane how you were able to do that. What do you steel plates look like?

 

Repeated hard launches at the drag strip are hard on the clutch.

The steels were not warped and only showed a few signs of being hot which is expected. Since the original clutch basket and center had a lot of scoring I think that's what caused the problem. I should have replaced them last year so the entire clutch assembly would have been new. I will inspect the clutch with every oil change this year in hopes of catching any problems before a major part failure. I am also considering getting a new billet clutch basket but would rather not spend $500 on it.