Been thinking about this one. I am wondering if the excessive free play left the clutch plates and friction plates holding some when fully pulled in, which overheated them. That or the play was from burning off friction material doing burnouts or something by the previous owner.
Good to hear it is fixed!
Yeah, don't know for sure. All I do know is that the clutch is new, working great, and is ridden by a new rider who is pretty conservative with his riding style so far, so it should last a long time. We put 90 miles on it yesterday as its test ride, and it passed with flying colors.
My thought is that the oil probably hadn't been changed in a while, so when we did change it with new, it just pushed the slippage over the edge because it was clean. The oil that we drained was quite dark and black, so who even knows how recently the oil had been changed before we got it. Still had a Honda oil filter on it, so either they bought OEM stuff for it, or it could have even been the original oil in there (bike is at 15k miles, so I hope not). But all is good now, and that's really all that matters.
Thanks again!
SBG
