Good afternoon youtube and welcome back to the channel so you probably noticed from the title
and the thumbnail that i have a clutch problem with the Royal Enfield Himalayan here. I'm going
to take the motorbike for a short ride just to show you what a slipping clutch looks like and
then i'm going to talk you through how i know that the motorcycle needs a new clutch rather than this
just being uh like a clutch cable adjustment issue for example. Now i'm sure that most of
you know exactly what a slipping clutch looks like especially if you've ridden motorbikes for
any length of time but for the sake of this i'm just going to take the motorcycle around the town
here and then i'm going quickly take it up the bypass just to show you exactly what's happening.
I started to feel that the gear shift on fourth and fifth gear here on the Royal Enfield Himalayan
would start to feel a little bit woolly so i switched out of my heavy motorcycle boots my Sidi
Adventure boots into these um let me see if we can see them and to these TDR One Team boots.
These are still motorcycle boots they're much lighter so it helps me to feel the gear shift
response if you like through the shift lever. Cos ordinarily with this bike it's quite a it's a
satisfying snick that you get you know it's not a clunk when you change gears but its feeling a
little bit softer than it should be. Speed is nice and low it's matching the revs we're not really
you know pulling on that throttle to any extent so you're not really noticing any you know major
slip in the clutch it's once we start to get up out of town and start to pick up speed that we'll
start to see a difference and i'll show you that now. Once we get on this country road. Sitting in
third gear here and if i open up this throttle you can see how those revs are going way up
but nothing's happening to the speed of the bike you know that's classic clutch slippage.
It's worth pointing out guys that the clutch is adjusted properly today i've had this adjusted
very very tight just to check it and the clutch is slipping and then i've had it adjusted far
too loose basically that takes tension off the clutch plates and the springs themselves
and the clutch is still slipping at speed so that tells me it's not an adjustment issue.
My gut instinct tells me that it might well be the
oem springs that come with the clutch i don't think they're particularly strong
but of course the diagnostics on these things are difficult and it starts to become a little bit of
a false economy for example if I take the clutch cover off here to have a look at the clutch plates
and the springs then okay i could just replace the springs and potentially get another say
five six seven thousand miles or whatever but of course if you want to do the job properly
then you're going to be replacing the gasket that's at least you know 10 quid you're going
to replace the oil filter, the oil there's another 20 30 quid so it starts to become a false economy.
When your clutch starts to slip like this the first thing you want to do is make sure that it's
adjusted correctly with the new motorbike, brand new clutch, new clutch cable then this adjustment
sits down here somewhere but obviously over time as these plates and the springs and cable start
to wear then that adjustment starts to creep up and of course once you get to this point then
you're essentially out of any kind of useful adjustment. Any kind of sustained riding,
speed, distance is very quickly going to overheat what's left of this clutch that in turn overheats
the oil, overheats the engine and causes more damage than you necessarily want. It goes without
saying that it's not exactly safe to ride like this especially if you're on a main road say a
bypass for example you're sitting at 50 55 miles per hour at four and a half thousand revs you know
you open up that throttle and you get nothing but noise and maybe a burning smell which is obviously
not exactly helpful. Again if you're sitting at 50 55 miles an hour nursing the motorcycle along
then people sitting behind you are going to start to get frustrated so you don't want to ride like
that. You see here the mileage is sitting just over 12 and a half thousand miles about 13 000
miles which is about you know 20 000 kilometres. Let's walk around here so of course ordinarily
a motorcycle clutch should last longer than you know twelve twelve and a half thousand thirteen
thousand miles. Riding off road can have a bearing on that as well because if you're in
difficult terrain there's a lot of feathering the clutch and wheels spinning and that type of thing.
To be honest guys this Himalayan clutch was pretty much doomed from the moment i bought the motorbike
and that's because when i rode out the dealership it was actually adjusted far too tight.
I partly blame myself for it for not noticing earlier but you know what it's like with a new
motorcyle you know you're breaking it and you're just getting used to the feel of the levers and
that type of thing but cutting a long story short the actual clutch itself from manufacture was
adjusted far too tight it very quickly overheated, overheated the clutch, overheated the engine and
essentially made the motorbike un-rideable. Not realizing what the problem was i got Royal
Enfield to pick the bike up and it got taken back to the dealership it turns out when the bike went
back to the dealership none of the parts were actually replaced, didn't get new clutch, didn't
get new clutch springs or anything. All he did was readjust the clutch cable and of course the
bike's been running fine but now you know 13 000 miles down the line the chickens have come home
to roost. I suppose the question becomes you know is this a warranty issue? some some manufacturers,
some dealers will argue that you know a clutch is a wear and tear item especially if you're riding
off-road. I think knowing the history of this bike it would be hard to argue that this wasn't a Royal
Enfield issue. Having said all of that you're probably going to think that i'm a bit mad when i
tell you that i'm not actually going to take this back to the dealership to get it repaired i've
actually ordered a clutch, gasket, new springs, upgraded springs from Hitchcock's and i'm going to
do the job myself. I like to do my own maintenance on the motorcycle, all these jobs i like to do
on my own because i'm continually learning about the machines that im riding. I'm not suggesting
for one minute that if you have this clutch issue you should go out and buy a clutch and just
do this job on you on your own because of course its a little bit more complex and i also have the
fall back position my brother's a mechanic so if i really have any great difficulty with this then
you know he's only a phone call away to come and help me out with it also make a video on that
changing the clutch etcetera. I'm not going to be riding the Himalayan motorcycle very often over
the next few days but as soon as the parts arrive then it's going to be priority number one to get
that new clutch switched in there and get back on the road again. I know this video was a little bit
different but i figured it'd be worthwhile just letting you guys know exactly what's happening
with the motorbike and why i think it's happened and exactly what we're going to do about it
anyway that's it for this one guys ride safe and i'll see in the next one.