I complained before about the extremely heavy clutch on the NC30. It’s to the point that I can’t ride it for more than 15 minutes before having extreme hand pain. Now, my RSI-scarred hands aren’t exactly strong, but it’s way worse than any other bike I’ve ever ridden.

My suspicion was that someone had fitted an extra clutch spring — the bike has clearly been raced and people apparently sometimes do this to lessen the risk of clutch slippage. I’ve been meaning to take the clutch apart for a while, but the prospect of having to order a new clutch cover gasket from overseas held me back. Eventually I decided that if I’m going to have the bike, I need to be able to ride it, so I went ahead.

The first problem was the castellated clutch hub nut, which needs a special tool. I attempted to manufacture this from a piece of pipe, but sheared the tabs right off. I ordered a real tool on eBay and after being held up another week I could finally get it off.

It turns out my suspicion was correct:

Sure enough, there were 4 diaphragm springs fitted instead of the normal 3.

So that solves that mystery. Hopefully reassembling with the normal 3 springs will make the clutch a bit more fit for humans. Apart from that, the clutch plates look good. I haven’t measured them yet but they seem to have a fair amount of wear left. However, I noticed something funny:

The clutch assembly. Note that the outermost friction plate is not mounted in the same slot as all the others.

The outermost clutch friction plate is not aligned with the rest, but is fitted into another, shallow, slot. I can’t imagine this is intended (the clutch shown in the Haynes manual don’t even have this slot) so maybe it could have something to do with the clutch dragging when it gets warm. There’s quite a bit less play for the plate in this slot than in the main one. I guess we’ll see. Has anyone seen this before?