Clutch Problem
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It's been a long time since I was able to do some work on the car due to a long overdue family holiday and a stag weekend and wedding. Unfortunately when showing the car to a curious chap from work I was explaining how becs often go 'clang' when you put them in gear the clutch got stuck in the open position. After a brief panic that I had done some damage I remembered that Marc Bell had the same problem with his R1 engine, where he had over extended the clutch arm and got his clutch stuck in a permanently open state.
So, in order to find out what had gone wrong I had to take the clutch cover off. This was a five-minute job and I was soon looking in bemusement at the clutch. At first the actuator bit hanging down had me really worried, as it just looks like it's broken off, but looking at the exploded diagram in the service manual confirmed that this is normal. I soon worked out that the outer bit of the clutch (the basket) was driven by the crank and the inner bit drove the gearbox. The clutch was indeed stuck open as both parts were turning freely against each other. You may be able to see in the top pictures that there is a little gap between the friction plates and the steels. I tried poking it about a bit but decided that I would have to take off the spring plate and relieve the tension in order to reset it. With the spring plate off it was easy to see what had happened. The outer friction plate was mated to the inner bit of the basket by little square pegs and it had obviously come out too far and the clang from the transmission had spun it round a bit so the pegs didn't line up, so it wouldn't go back in again and engage. On the upside I was able to have a good look at the friction surfaces and they were minty fresh, confirming that the engine really was in as new condition with the 280miles stated being very likely. The whole lot went back together very easily and with a fair amount a faffing around to get the cover back on over the actuator arm the job was done.
I had measured my clutch pedal pivot and attempted to get a good long pedal action, but as I had found out when testing the operation of the clutch it did still seem to bite very quickly near the top of the pedal. Given that my clutch had got stuck out as well makes me think that I need to rethink the clutch pedal pivot and try and get less cable movement from the travel of the pedal. I'll try moving the cable nearer the pivot point to start out with.