Hodaka 250 Clutch (fiber) plate thickness

[Darrell]

Clutch slipping on my 250SL so I deglazed the seven steel plate with 180 emery and a cross hatch pattern. This helped some but there's still slip in 5th gear.

Does anybody know what the minimum thickness of the fiber plates should be? This could be hard to answer because I don't think there ever was a shop manual and specs written for the 250s and 175 . The ones I have measure to about 2.1 mm.

Thanks guys!

[taber hodaka]

My manuals tell me the friction plate thickness (new) is 2.25mm. They are both listed in my manuals for the 175 SL (61) and the 250/SL (70A). Hope this helps. Some times oils can make a difference ------- Clarence

[dirty_rat]

I don't know if this is correct, but I seem to remember someone saying that clutch plates from a Suzuki 250 (unknown which year or model) would work in the Hodaka clutch. If so, see what they recommend for use limits.

[Darrell]

Thanks for the feedback. My friction plates are very close to the factory thickness then. Overall the plate stack would be barely a mm shorter than new.

Springs are 28.5 mm +/-

Oil is Lucas 10w40 motorcycle oil. First time using this oil and the transmission shifts way better. Can even find neutral while it's running now.

As for the slipping, it crossed my mind to add some anti-slip additive like my limited-slip (posi-trac) truck differential uses. But first I'll remove one of the spacer discs, and see if that helps.

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In other clutch news, I "blueprinted" my on-off switch Wombat clutch following RR2 instructions. That procedure really turned its function around for the better.

[Darrell]

I don't know if this is correct, but I seem to remember someone saying that clutch plates from a Suzuki 250 (unknown which year or model) would work in the Hodaka clutch. If so, see what they recommend for use limits.

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It looks like Hodaka-Parts has clutch plates (the steel ones as well as the friction/fiber plates) for the 250 available now. As I recall "Sorry not available right now!" used to flash up when searching their site for these.

Rather a relief to see more parts become available -- rather than unobtainable.

[Dale]

Hodaka fans are so fortunate to have folks that have invested so much time, effort and money to make parts available for our machines! Terry and Bev, Paul, Greg, Jamie, Bruce, Scott come to mind immediately. Thanks to all of them!

[viclioce]

I just bought an entire bottom end rebuild kit for my 175SL. Same as the 250’s. If you call Terry, he can give you a part number for a 175/250 bottom end kit instead of ordering individual pieces. It’s only about $20 more than a 100/125 kit! Victor

[Darrell]

Hodaka fans are so fortunate to have folks that have invested so much time, effort and money to make parts available for our machines! Terry and Bev, Paul, Greg, Jamie, Bruce, Scott come to mind immediately. Thanks to all of them!

Oh my, that recent stock of 250 friction plates I reported wasn't a boatload of them. When I went to purchase a set (of 7) there was only six plates available. One plate short of a full deck but it should go a long way to moving the bike along even if I redeploy the thickest one of the old plates.