Shovel BDL clutch pack

[jmcartor]

Thought id ask the experts before I throw it all back in

Replacing my primary chain and tensioner after it got dry and ate the last one. Sealed primary 83 fxwg with tapered mainshaft

I break it open and find out I have a BDL chain drive kit, nice surprise. soaking/drying my plates tonight and assembling tomorrow but my clutch pack doesn't really match what BDL says it should be and wondering if anyone has experience with these, been trying for a week to get those guys on the phone with zero luck. This is from BDL installation guide:

13. Re-install clutch pack: Two .078” steels first then alternate clutch fiber and steel ending with a fiber. Our clutch pack is 8-.078” steels and 7 fibers.

Then they have a tech video of them installing a chain drive on a newer bike with splined shaft that I'm ignoring.

The picture is my stack how it came out, starting with a steel, ending with 3 steels? lol 8 steels and 5 fibers. Also some of my steels are different than the others as you can see.

I will say the clutch ran fine before even with a slack chain and destroyed tensioner. But what do I know

[ExplodingCoffinEmporium]

Interesting, I run the BDL Competitor CC-100-S on my 78’ and it’s 7 steel and 5 friction, starts with 2 steel then fiber alternated until ending with steel.

[jmcartor]

Interesting, I run the BDL Competitor CC-100-S on my 78’ and it’s 7 steel and 5 friction, starts with 2 steel then fiber alternated until ending with steel.

Good to know. I honestly don’t know which specific BDL it is. Can’t imagine 3 steels on the outside is the answer but I don’t want to change it unless I know it’s supposed to be different.

[docmel]

Who knows what the original installer did, either right or wrong. I have found that older BDL and other drive companies did change some things over the decades, and its hard to find info or vids of the older models

How do you know its a BDL unit?

Anyways, I am tending to thik if it ran ok before for 1000s of miles, installing the same way may be the way to go

[ExplodingCoffinEmporium]

Who knows what the original installer did, either right or wrong. I have found that older BDL and other drive companies did change some things over the decades, and its hard to find info or vids of the older models

How do you know its a BDL unit?

Anyways, I am tending to thik if it ran ok before for 1000s of miles, installing the same way may be the way to go

Yeah hard to argue with that, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it or else who knows what can of worms you may open in doing so.

[JBinNC]

Looks like a previous meddler removed (or didn't have) one or more of the fiber plates, and used steels to make up the stack height. Nothing wrong with that, except you lose some effective clutch area. With limited lever/cable travel, limiting the number of fiber plates makes a clean release easier to achieve. But on your '83, you should have plenty of lever travel (much better than the pre- '82 models). The steels stacked on each other just act as a shim or spacer. If the proper assembly calls for starting with 2 steels, by all means do so. On a lot of these clutches, the back steels are what everything bears upon. On the pre-'71(?) XL clutch upon which many of these clutches are based, the back steel was quite thick, like 1/8" or 3/16" or so.

If it were mine, I would get a new set of fiber plates, and replace any steels which may be warped (which may be all of them), and I would put the clutch together properly.

Jim