Publisher's Note: Welcome to our 23rd edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "Expert Guide to Wet Clutch Maintenance: Enhancing Your Ride".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "Tuesday Tech Tips" to see everything published to-date.

Expert Guide to Wet Clutch Maintenance: Enhancing Your Ride

John Gardner: One engine, two wheels, and a ton of fun. Pop the clutch in, and you're off. Welcome to this AMSOIL Tech Tip. Now, I said pop the clutch in, and you're off. That's a perfect scenario. Why? Because we're talking about the wet clutch system.

You can see it right here. It's actually like an automotive clutch. What you have is you got some steels and some fibers in between here and a big spring that's holding pressure on it. It goes inside of this basket. So when you push in the clutch, you're actually going to push in on these springs, and then what that's going to do is free them up. And when it frees it up, you're not transferring any energy to the rear wheel. You let go of the clutch, bam! They squeeze together, and in the perfect scenario, you're off and running. But with that come some issues.

Now, the clutches themselves. Inside the clutches, you have these plates, and you have these steel things right here, these fibers. And what happens is it starts to wear out over time, like this. And fluid plays an important role. But Len, even more important, fluid plays a role in driver feel with that clutch. This is huge.

Len Groom: It is a big deal, and we've spent a ton of time testing on this. The rider input is big on a dirt bike. You really need to have the lever feel to be consistent, meaning I want the lever to be somewhat progressive but not super grabby so the bike takes off from underneath you. So the way you can influence that, there's a couple of different ways. Viscosity will play into that.

The thicker the oil, the more progressive the clutch feels. The thinner the oil, the more grabby the clutch will get. It's frictional characteristics that are kind of depicted in this chart. This is a real complicated way of putting numbers to lever feel, and what they do is they classify it in different ways. So there's a JASO MA, MA1, MA2, and then MB, being the slipperiest. Our dirt bike oil is an MA1. That's a perfect blend of additive and base oil to provide the rider with a consistent lever feel.

John Gardner: So, what you're saying is if it's really thin, I may be able to slip the clutch a little bit. If it's thick, perhaps I could stall it.

Len Groom: That's correct.

John Gardner: That's cool. Now, that also has to do a big job. We're talking about the transmission, we're talking about all the engine components, and the wet clutch in one system.