Clutch Cable Replacement

Snapped the clutch cable at the handlebar, luckily I wasn't too far from home. To get her out of gear and into neutral so I could walk her back, I rocked her back and forth a bit while pushing on the shifter with my hand.

The new cable from O'Hanlon's Motorcycles was about $19. The Powerbuilt impact driver was $15 from Kragen. All the forum posts were right, don't try to do this without an impact driver. The four screws holding the countershaft sprocket cover will not come off without one. I'm going to replace them with hex screws as soon as possible.

Now that I've replaced the cable she seems to shift better than ever. This could just be because I did a better job with the adjustment this time, or because there is less grease and gunk inside, but for $35 and a couple hours, it's worth attempting before major clutch work.

Note: Leave the old clutch cable in place as a guide until you've routed the new one.

Remove Old Clutch Cable

The impact driver. If it doesn't seem to work at first, make sure you've got it set to loosen, not tighten. I thought I'd followed the simple directions well enough, but I had it set wrong at first.





What we're dealing with. You can see three of the screws that require the impact wrench, the other is hidden by the shifter.






Remove the foot peg. Take note of the order of the five pieces.







Remove the nut holding the rear of the shifting arm.











Remove the bolt holding the front of the shifter, where it attaches to the clutch. Take note of the angle of the clamp that the bolt cinches. When I put the shifter back on I couldn't shift above neutral because I had the angle wrong.




First of the four screws that are loosened with the impact driver. They're different lengths, so pay attention to which goes where.






Second.







Third.







Fourth. Nevermind the shift lever, I went out of sequence.







The innards once you get the screws off and turn the plate around. It's nice to finally see what I've been dealing with when doing clutch adjustments. From this point on I'd suggest wearing gloves, there is a lot of thick grease around the ball bearings.

I ended up having to cut the end off of the clutch cable to get it backed out through the plate. The metal bulb at the end refused to come out of its slot. I also ended up unhooking the spring to get a better angle.




Plate and arm. You can see the unhooked spring and the metal bulb from the end of the clutch cable still in the arm.






New Hotness

The new cable.







Routing it under the tank alongside the old one.







Inserting it through the handlebar adjuster.







Slotting it into the handle.







Take off the rubber grommet to get the new cable into the plate.







In the plate, grommet back on.











Hooked the new cable back into the arm, then reattached the return spring.










From left: plate screws, shifter and its bolt, foot peg bits.







Plate back on, ready for the screws.



















Put the shifter back on. Adjust the angle of the shifter so that it will shift through all the gears. Another way to say that would be that the clamp that I'm about to bolt together in this photo can be rotated clockwise to make it easier to shift up, and counter to shift down.



Nut on the rear pivot point of the shifter.







Another view of the order of the foot peg pieces. After putting the foot peg back on do a clutch adjustment and yr done. I'll take some photos of the adjustment next time I do one.