I burnt out my 890 Rally's clutch!

And it was totally my fault!
Here's the story of how I did the damage, and how to avoid it derailing your trip.

30 minutes into a 3 day ride with Neil (790R), Michael (1290SAR) and Phil (890 Rally) I was feeling great, so great that I made a spur of the moment decision to go up a sidetrack loop off the top of Monsidale road to show it to Phil on his 890 Rally....after all of us decided not to do this loop at breakfast !

'I'll only hold the guys up for 5 minutes - so why not'...or so I thought. Wrong....

Riding the super capable 890 Rally does tend to make me think I'm some invincible hard enduro legend at times - but (as seen on various of my videos recently) I'm not only human and a fairly average rider - but also short and over 60! I really should know better by now, eh. Nope.

So - the normally tricky but ride-able first few hundred meter loose rocky climb from the road had had so much rain on it lately due to our crazy mid year wet period that it was a rutted out rocky slippery mess. Neil and I had ridden up there fully loaded including camping gear only 9 months earlier! WTF? I think because it was SO not what I expected that I forgot all about my normal riding style and just tried to get the bike up any way that I could. Unfortunately - this meant that I used the style I would on my 350 and kept the revs high and slipped the clutch to keep my tyres up on the sides of the ruts, rather than slipping down into them and using up my tires grinding up them like I normally would. This abuse meant that I was heating up my clutch in repeated sections of the same long rutted out section, without any riding in between where it could cool down at all...and add to that that I was suddenly overheating since my cold weather heated gear was turned on, so I wasn't paying attention to my clutch lever adjustment like I normally do - since this was all happening so fast as I was trying to go quickly to not hold up the other 2 guys....until I eventually realised I had a clutch issue when I had trouble getting the front wheel over a log.

You can see the track in the video's right hand top corner....but I only turned the camera on right after the hill in question unfortunately - since I had thought the first part was going to be a doddle so much so that I didn't even bother taping it. Doh! My bad. As you can see we then contended with 28 minutes of overgrown rutty snotty tracks with trees down all over it. Looking back now - it was both silly and one of the best parts of this whole ride because of the difficulty level....which I had now raised to a new level by torching my clutch.

Phil loves logs and obstacles....me not so much, but I get through around over and under them with a smile on my face most of the time. Phil was also super patient and ready, willing and able to help me get my bike over a few logs that even I could normally get over...since my clutch wasn't working correctly because I'd adjusted the cable incorrectly at the bottom end so that even though I'd slacked off the cable at the lever end - the actuator arm couldn't move further away because the end of the actuator arm was hitting my tank! Again - totally my bad!

If it's not crystal clear yet - this was NOT the bike's fault. I did 40,000km on the 790 and the plates friction material had only worn by 0.2mm for the whole pack. Between the 8 friction plates this is nothing significant and well within tolerance. On the scorched 890 set I had worn it out by 1.6mm!! This means each of the 8 friction plates had worn by the same as the whole of the 790's 8 plates put together!

This makes the pressure plate move significantly in relation to the throw out bearing actuator....and changes the angle of the longer 1 finger arm significantly. I did this firstly by abusing the clutch (getting it so hot I quickly burnt then wore away nearly half the friction material), and secondly by setting the 1 finger actuator arm up to be too close to the tank. Doh!

I hadn't sat down and really thought it through when I set it up. If you heat up your clutch plates and quickly wear them away like I did by abusing them on that hill, once they cool back down the clutch pack will be a new (thinner) thickness - so the actuator arm at the bottom needs to be able to move further away once they cool back down and the whole clutch pack contracts due to how much you've worn out the plates. At this point more cable slack is needed, which you do first by using the adjuster nut on the clutch perch, but if this runs out there's coarse cable adjustment with 2 12mm nuts at the bottom. If you can let there be enough slack the now thinner pack can be held firmly together by the pressure plate springs and PASC ramps under power.

If I'd worn it out even more I do reveal the 'trick' Dakar riders use to get home.

#KTM890adventure
#KTM890Rally
#KTMclutch

(00:00) I burnt up my clutch on a hill!
(08:00) Let's measure the friction plates
(19:20) Putting it all back together - correctly.