Clutch sticking in cold weather and manual choke

[guru]

During temperatures around below 50 F, the clutch sticks when at a stop.  This will sometimes cause the engine to cease during traffic or a very slow take-off because the engine can't build up to 1000 rpms, which I simply can't have keep happening.  I know my idle speed is fine, as it is no where near the 1000 rpms the clutch spring requires and this only happens in cold weather.  I'm not sure as to why it is sticking, so help is greatly appreciated.

Also, does anyone know a cheap solution to a manual choke?  Not one which I have to cut open the current auto-choke, as I would prefere to keep that as a backup.  The cold weather makes it truly impossible to go up any incline at a speed higher than 5 mph.

[streido]

Could be you just need to take the rear pulley and clutch apart and give it all a good clean out then regrease the torque driver?

[blue]

for the choke I have done with out and just put a spare tank under the seat with a flow going right to the carb works great.

[guru]

Could be you just need to take the rear pulley and clutch apart and give it all a good clean out then regrease the torque driver?

Could you explain what the torq driver is and what grease to use?  Sorry, it's been a while since I've messed with it.

[skippy]

Could you explain what the torq driver is and what grease to use?  Sorry, it's been a while since I've messed with it.

take the kick start cover off. then undo the 14m(i think) bolt of the clutch bell. the clutch will come out of the spline. there should be some roler cage berings inside that will need greasing from time to time. not sure what the propper grease to use is. i use silicon grease.
while you have got the clutch off. id open the clutch up and clean with clutch and brake cleaner. also inspect the clutch springs while your at it

[blue]

You can pick up clutch grease at any motorcycle shop look for the silver stuff. and also there some stuff called silver clean it works great for cleaning springs and clutch parts.

[tortoise]

cheap solution to a manual choke?

Install an on-off switch on an enricher wire . . to stop the enricher needle extending and shutting off the "enriched" fuel flow . . or if your trips are short, just unplug the enricher.

[mono]

I've had some problems with a sticking clutch as well, and I found that the best remedy was to disassemble it completely and clean and de-grease every part. In our clutch (and I mean the clutch itself) nothing should be lubricated, it's designed to do without. Grease will only attract dust, which will make it stick again soon...

On the other hand, the torquedrive (the moving driveface behind the clutch plate) and bearings (inside the driven pulley) really do need lubrication ! Once you've removed the clutch plate you can easily take apart the rest of the driven pulley assembly, and you will see what I mean...

Be sure to use a good quality high temp mineral based bearing grease (no silicones here !)... Take it easy on the amount of grease, since an excess of it will be pushed out onto your belt and clutch... It's safer to use less grease and check this more often (every 1000 miles or so at first) until you get a feel for how much is needed and how long it will last...


Regarding your choke problems : first make sure your carb is setup right, the automatic choke should work fine when jetting and idle mixture are right. If you're really not getting up to speed after some warm up time, your engine is probably just running lean, fix that first - the choke mostly works in the idle range anyway...

+1 for tortoise's choke switch idea by the way... The standard choke is fine, but in very cold weather it shuts down a little too early sometimes.. Switching off the power to the choke for a while is a very nice and clean way to delay this !  (I still have a thermostat switch laying around somewhere that I wanted to try for this purpose, maybe a nice experiment for this winter  

[guru]

I might have to go with synthetic although, as I can't seem to find a high temperature mineral based grease near me.

[mono]

With mineral based I meant not based on silicone or other stuff. Synthetic lubricants are often just synthesized from mineral oil leftovers, or otherwise still made to behave like mineral oil instead of like silicones and stuff - that's why I tend to call them mineral based although that's not always correct.... my bad, sorry....

Synthetic lubricants mostly perform even better than those distilled from crude oil, since the manufacturer has exact control over its properties - the most important properties for our purpose are that it doesn't separate under high temperatures and high centrifugal forces... Greases are thickened with clay- or soap-like substances, that's why they can separate into thinner oil and solid stuff if they're not up to the task at hand...



Long story short : as long as it's specifically suitable for roller bearings and has a high temperature spec (only mind the specs given for continuous use !) compared to a standard bearing grease, it will probably be fine..

[guru]

How would I go about greasing my front axle as well?  I don't have anything to inject the grease with.

[mono]

The bearings in the front wheel might be of the fully sealed type and greased "for life" by the manufacturer - if that's the case and they're not running smooth anymore, they should just be replaced...

The other possibility is that the bearings only have a seal at the outside, you can grease them, but you'd still have to remove one of them since there's some kind of bushing or collar in between them.. You could be lucky if there's enough room to push it aside far enough to see the balls of the bearings and put dabs of grease in there with a long screwdriver...

As far as I know it's not a periodic maintenance item anyway, as long as the bearings aren't running extremely rough or noisy, they're just fine.

[streido]

This vid will show you a basic service and check over of the whole cvt set-up. Your engine is pretty similair tho wont be exactly the same but you'll get the idea from it.