Lock Out/Lock-Up Tuning

[badassbanshee479]

Probably a ton more than needed lol I was aftaid of the springs being to light... I have two nuts per arm and 4 washers per arm

[SlowerThanYou]

Probably a ton more than needed lol I was aftaid of the springs being to light... I have two nuts per arm and 4 washers per arm

 

I can't stress enough to weigh your arm weights in grams before making changes.

[SlowerThanYou]

I have friends i cant convince to take hd springs out of their lockup to get some slippadge..

all about trial and error. Learning your setup. Dont forgetget tire and gear. I like to gear to get just to the end of the track then start with a lighter spring/base pressure and increase untill it nearly bogs off the line. Then back off slightly on spring pressure. Is this a good approach?

 

I'm pretty sure we gear differently than most, but that's another subject.

 

As for your spring/base pressure approach? We tune base pressure & arm weight for the quickest 60' for heads-up racing. Do we chase it after every pass, no. We come in with a known baseline for the track if we have one. If it falls within the 60' area we are looking for we leave it alone for the race. The majority of tuning & maintenance takes place at home.

 

As for index & bracket racing we have softer tuning baseline we use. It's more about a slightly slower 60' for consistency reasons. This set-up we can make around 40 passes without looking/touching the clutch.

 

Slightly less than a bog invites a bog, IMO! Nothing has come good from our races when a bog occurs.

I haven't got to the friction inspection yet. The main reason is they don't photo well like the steels do. The best I can do is provide written description of what to look for. Hopefully I can get to it this Holiday weekend.

 

Besides measuring & looking for obvious damage like someone brought up. We look for glazing, burnt & sometimes smeared. I wish photos would show this stuff. I hope I didn't forget anything.

 

Glazed frictions are a common thing we run into. The material appears shinny is the best description & they lose a lot of grip/friction. We prep our steels to help prevent glazing on both the steels & frictions. I think I covered that in the steels portion earlier. We are preparing to do it a different way in the near future.

 

Burnt frictions are basically black in appearance. The frictions got to hot & they need to be tossed. We had a lot of this when we 1st started clutch tuning. We have some ways to help cool the clutch pack. I hope to cover that in the future if I remember.

 

Smeared frictions I think only happened once or twice. I'm pretty sure it was caused by some coatings we were trying on the steels. Maybe someone else has experienced this & could chime in.

 

So, how do we prevent some of this or slow it down. I've covered some of it with the steels inspection & maintenance. Some will be covered next in the clutch hub.

[Surfrjag]

cooling the clutch pack like you said.. most billet baskets have slots for more oil to enter the clutch. other than that maybe a different oil? i have been using atf for a while. also making sure your lockup weight fully grabs the clutch so your not slipping all the way down the track would help. but thats obviouis. lol

[phunt]

Question, if you take the same bike with a 7 plate clutch, and go with a 8 plate setup will the 8 plate need less base pressure?

[SlowerThanYou]

Question, if you take the same bike with a 7 plate clutch, and go with a 8 plate setup will the 8 plate need less base pressure?

If the base pressure was correct/ideal with the 7 plate. The 8 plate should need less base pressure.

 

Glad someone is still paying attention to this thread. There's still more information coming in the future.

[Wheelman Chassis]

 

Besides measuring & looking for obvious damage like someone brought up. We look for glazing, burnt & sometimes smeared. I wish photos would show this stuff. I hope I didn't forget anything.

 

Glazed frictions are a common thing we run into. The material appears shinny is the best description & they lose a lot of grip/friction. We prep our steels to help prevent glazing on both the steels & frictions. I think I covered that in the steels portion earlier. We are preparing to do it a different way in the near future.

 

Burnt frictions are basically black in appearance. The frictions got to hot & they need to be tossed. We had a lot of this when we 1st started clutch tuning. We have some ways to help cool the clutch pack. I hope to cover that in the future if I remember.

 

Smeared frictions I think only happened once or twice. I'm pretty sure it was caused by some coatings we were trying on the steels. Maybe someone else has experienced this & could chime in.

 

So, how do we prevent some of this or slow it down. I've covered some of it with the steels inspection & maintenance. Some will be covered next in the clutch hub.

IMO Glazing is something i don't think we will ever eliminate completely, I use steel prep to aid in longevity before this happens. Some  signs of this during race day would be consistent track surface(as close as a sand track can be anyway),launch rpm,and clutch setup but 60' starts to fall of and rate of engagement starts to lengthen. On the fly there are things you can do to aid in making it through the race day, but ultimately resurfacing of plates and clutch fibers will be needed.

 

Burnt frictions are a part of every learning curve, caused by the clutch slipping for a longer period of time , lack of adjustment as a clutch wears,lack of cooling or oil etc.  I have been messing with some oils and i believe all next season i will be running mobile 4t synthetic 10w40 oil.. its designed for wet clutches and seems to be very consistent. we have 80 ish passes on my 18dm and have had very minimal change to the friction and steel condition.This is with a 8 plate setup on a 155+hp motor. I will be switching to a 10 plate clutch next season and expect even better results.

 

Smearing of the plates has happened to me also (as Brian stated  its very rare) I believe it happens when the clutch slips excessively causing a great deal of heat,then getting a secondary amount of weight added forcing lockup in a very fast rate while friction material is in a overheated state. I have seen this in a few competitors bikes while trying to tune a standard lockup and even more so in asphalt racing street bikes.

 

Brian, i am excited to hear your clutch hub opinion as i also do some things to the hub.

 

 

As for index & bracket racing we have softer tuning baseline we use. It's more about a slightly slower 60' for consistency reasons. This set-up we can make around 40 passes without looking/touching the clutch.

 

Slightly less than a bog invites a bog, IMO! Nothing has come good from our races when a bog occurs.

I agree 100%!  In addition a softer base/static setup is more forgiving to errors in launch rpm(if not using a launch limiter, which is a problem in itself) changes in traction, and other variable that you may encounter..

 

cooling the clutch pack like you said.. most billet baskets have slots for more oil to enter the clutch. other than that maybe a different oil? i have been using atf for a while. also making sure your lockup weight fully grabs the clutch so your not slipping all the way down the track would help. but thats obviouis. lol

I gave a bit of my opinion above. I think brian will hit on this but oil direction in the hub and surface of the hub - first friction can play a part in cooling.

 

If the base pressure was correct/ideal with the 7 plate. The 8 plate should need less base pressure.

 

Glad someone is still paying attention to this thread. There's still more information coming in the future.

Im still paying attention, just been real busy racing and building... I contribute some of our victory at the bluegrass nationals to clutch tuning, in addition to a very good jockey.

 

 

 

Chris

WheelmanChassis

[Wheelman Chassis]

I look at this ever time I sign on just taking in everything I can and waiting for my lockup to be made for next year .then all the fun will start for me but I will have a lot of springs in bags ready to go with the psi on them. So I'm still here also and ready for the first TNT in michigan

Turbo, i often tell people that the asphalt is the best place to start learning this stuff. Traction is consistent and its easier to tell what the clutch is doing. Also you might live close to a guy that could help ya out..

 

Chris

[SlowerThanYou]

IMO Glazing is something i don't think we will ever eliminate completely, I use steel prep to aid in longevity before this happens. Some  signs of this during race day would be consistent track surface(as close as a sand track can be anyway),launch rpm,and clutch setup but 60' starts to fall of and rate of engagement starts to lengthen. On the fly there are things you can do to aid in making it through the race day, but ultimately resurfacing of plates and clutch fibers will be needed.

Glazing is most common problem even with a well set-up clutch. It happens to both the steels & frictions. In the past we have always used steel preperation to take care of both for the life of the clutch.

 

I would like to hear your way of resurfacing the plates & fibers. That's if you care to share the process. I recently machined a inner hub & pressure plate to use as holders to resurface. I need to get the camera fixed to take pictures.

 

Burnt frictions are a part of every learning curve, caused by the clutch slipping for a longer period of time , lack of adjustment as a clutch wears,lack of cooling or oil etc.  I have been messing with some oils and i believe all next season i will be running mobile 4t synthetic 10w40 oil.. its designed for wet clutches and seems to be very consistent. we have 80 ish passes on my 18dm and have had very minimal change to the friction and steel condition.This is with a 8 plate setup on a 155+hp motor. I will be switching to a 10 plate clutch next season and expect even better results.

I'm glad we don't have this problem anymore. Our clutch R&D got pretty expensive in the early days.

 

As for transmission oils we started with conventional 10w30 & 10w40 designed for wet clutchs. We tried type F trans fluid for one race. It didn't want to let the clutch pack un-load on the shift kills. Now we use Royal Purple Synchromax it's synthetic. It works great, but too expensive $17-18 a quart. Going to try a synthetic ATF this next year.

 

Smearing of the plates has happened to me also (as Brian stated  its very rare) I believe it happens when the clutch slips excessively causing a great deal of heat,then getting a secondary amount of weight added forcing lockup in a very fast rate while friction material is in a overheated state. I have seen this in a few competitors bikes while trying to tune a standard lockup and even more so in asphalt racing street bikes.

Our smearing came from trying coatings on the floater plates. We prep them now before installing & haven't had a problem since.

Brian, i am excited to hear your clutch hub opinion as i also do some things to the hub.

I'm not going to get to detailed on this subject. 1st, our clutch cooling mainly takes place in between runs when the quad is not running. Some of it involves: ice cold rags, fan & rotating the motor. Just for info, we can go 3 runs back to back with doing nothing. It's not our prefered way of doing things, but in later eleminations it happens.

 

This part helps get the oil into the clutch pack. We have specific holes drilled in the inner hub. Plus, some other places that most wouldn't think of, or maybe some do.

 

Now, that we have done all of this, LOL! We have to get the oil out of the clutch pack/basket area to get the clutch to lock-up. Centrifugal Force will do most of the work. There are some other areas that help with that process, but that's one of them detail things mentioned earlier.

 

I would like to hear the first friction helping with cooling. I may already be doing it & not know it. I don't expect you to share everything, I don't.

 

I agree 100%!  In addition a softer base/static setup is more forgiving to errors in launch rpm(if not using a launch limiter, which is a problem in itself) changes in traction, and other variable that you may encounter..

This is a very good tid bit of information!

 

I gave a bit of my opinion above. I think brian will hit on this but oil direction in the hub and surface of the hub - first friction can play a part in cooling.

I guess I hit this a couple comments ago.

 

Im still paying attention, just been real busy racing and building... I contribute some of our victory at the bluegrass nationals to clutch tuning, in addition to a very good jockey.

I figured there was still some die hards out there. It makes things a little easier to type, when people make comments or have questions.

 

Congrats, on the victory!

 

We have some significant changes for next year. The plans are mainly for asphalt, but we have a few goals for sand also.

 

 

[SlowerThanYou]

1-2 passes were won on the starting like against much bigger cc bikes in rigid frames. .423 r/t in the final on a .400 tree. Lol. Liljockey481 ftw lol.

 

I think I mentioned about our clutch set-up differences for full tree vs. pro tree. Plus, there are other differences in other areas; that's a whole different subject.

 

My limited experience @ 300' there seems to be a trend. Not very many racer's pay attention to thier reaction times.

[SlowerThanYou]

Brian...  I can't speak for others, but our group pays real close attention to RT and 60 foot. 

For 300 foot, smaller motors...our races are being won on RT and 60 foot...MPH is not as important for the smaller motors

 

We do a lot of bracket and index racing here against snomoturds.  So RT is everything...

 

I'm glad somebody is paying attention, because I haven't seen nothing too impressive on the other side of our 150 slips.

 

As for our 60's that was a somewhat easy transition for us. Hooking up down track was the bigger problem. That got fixed with the Rippers, LOL! MPH is probably last on the priority list, but we still shoot for a certain MPH. We picked up a solid 3 mph between 2 different riders. I think the top MPH was 83 for the 185 lb. jockey & 80 mph for me 210 lbs. There's ET to be gained with that difference/gain.

 

We have been working real hard with R&D of the clutch/components. Plus, with a few other new parts. The goal is 1.20 something 60's next year.

 

Now, what's your thoughts on this thread? Part of the reason it was started had to do with you.

[dajogejr]

 

Now, what's your thoughts on this thread? Part of the reason it was started had to do with you.

 

I think there's a wealth of information here....and I've already congratulated you in the past and said good job.

However, as in the past, I'll stop of breaking my or your arm off from patting you on the back.

 

You are doing very well in 300 foot paddle tracks and have made great progress.  But I believe, and tell me if I'm wrong, you said in a few passes you'd be beating me at my own game...on sand.

Which...IMO, would have never happened   Now that you've had considerable time to put down passes on paddle tracks (I haven't owned a bike since 2010, and I think I only put down a small handful of passes last year on Wheel's bike) you've had ample time to do your homework and apply it to paddle tracks.

 

Which, again...I commend you...

 

The issue is not what you're doing.  It's how you're presenting it.  And since we both have Alpha personalities, it's quite possible we just will never see eye to eye on everything, and may never get along...and that's fine.  We're probably too similar in personalities..which is why we  bicker...and neither of us are willing to back down.

 

You're making great strides...  but if I remember correctly, your posts made it sound like you were going to set the world on fire.

And in my opinion, you've opened up a huge door to clutch tuning....which is the next level.

But I still don't think anyone is setting the world on fire.

 

Agree to disagree.  I'm fully aware why you started the thread.  But now, like then, I still stand by my statements.

[Wheelman Chassis]

Mike you have me at your dispose. You don't need this thread.

 

But the answer I would give is get a good baseline to where you are and watch 60' numbers as you make changes.

[SlowerThanYou]

I think there's a wealth of information here....and I've already congratulated you in the past and said good job.

However, as in the past, I'll stop of breaking my or your arm off from patting you on the back.

Dave, Our latest post about each other have been pretty civilized & I intend on keeping it that way. Thanks for the compliment of the wealth of information here, some mine & some from other's (Thanks Wheelman). The intent of this thread is to help other's with something, I think is/was lacking in the sport.

You are doing very well in 300 foot paddle tracks and have made great progress.  But I believe, and tell me if I'm wrong, you said in a few passes you'd be beating me at my own game...on sand.

I'm happy with our progess with the 300' & only competing at 5 events. As with asphalt or sand, I'm never totally satisfied.

 

I really wanted to keep the past out of this, but I have to answer your second sentence. I could go find the post, but as I remember. That I could or couldn't run a 3.9 within my 1st 3 runs ever in 300', I did that. I'm sure you disagree, but you & I are probably the only one that care/don't care.

The issue is not what you're doing.  It's how you're presenting it.  And since we both have Alpha personalities, it's quite possible we just will never see eye to eye on everything, and may never get along...and that's fine.  We're probably too similar in personalities..which is why we  bicker...and neither of us are willing to back down.

As far as how I represented things. Heck, I think that happens good amount of people on these forums, including yourself. I've had some pretty good hater's (around 10) of me from other forums. They have made threats/promises like one has done here. Some pretty serious stuff has been said, but in the reality of things. I looked up a good majority of them at the track, in their own backyards. After I introduced myself, we seem to get along just fine since & at re-occurring events. The #1 hater, I even had a couple beers with. I would afford you the same treatment as the other's & I'm sure we could get along just fine.

 

You're making great strides...  but if I remember correctly, your posts made it sound like you were going to set the world on fire.

And in my opinion, you've opened up a huge door to clutch tuning....which is the next level.

But I still don't think anyone is setting the world on fire.

I have made great strides in 300'. My intent on anything I do with Motorsports is to set the world on fire. That confidence/mind set has worked with all our programs, including 300'.

 

Agree to disagree.  I'm fully aware why you started the thread.  But now, like then, I still stand by my statements.

 

I am & still a 300' underdog/rookie. I haven't set the world on fire, but I'm proud of what has been accomplished to date.

 

We went to the big event in Gilbert, LA. this year. The class is different now it's 0-525cc limited. I think it was the biggest class besides, Bracket & a couple index classes. Anyway, we lost in the semi-finals not bad for severe 300' rookies. That was done with 443cc on race gas & stock frame. No excuses, we will hopefully do better the next time. As for the other two classes, we did very well with them also.

 

You think you are fully aware, why I started the thread. It goes back to the presentation thing you brought up. I'm the only who knows why I started it & like I stated you were part of the reason. To me, that was patting you on the back.

 

Enough of this old crap. If you want to continue with it, please PM me. Other than that, I hope you take the time with inputs or questions on this thread.

[SlowerThanYou]

im still setting in the mid to upper 1.30 60' but thats with a 14 pdl stag extreme... new american racers in a ripper and some more work on setup and i hope to be in the low 1.30 60's  and maybe the 1.20 with  a 150 lb rider

 I didn't want to get into the tire thing too much. I think we are able to run the tires we do because of the clutch set-up.

 

The photo in my signature had the largest tire we have run. It was in Gilbert this year & my Puerto Rico friend had it with all their bikes. I can't remember the exact tire, but it was a 78" or 80", 16 paddle stag extreme with 2 layers of kevlar. They worked just as well as our smaller 14 paddle Rippers.

 

We will be doing more testing this year with the larger tires for better data. We new something was wrong when it was at Gilbert, but Angel didn't want to check the clutch. I picked the wrong time to do the durabilty test with the clutch pack. 250 runs ends up with broken frictions!!!