Clutch plate free play ....... how much?

[corrado]

The 'Bible' says with the clutch compressed you need to have at least 1 mm of free up and down movement on the clutch plates to avoid clutch drag, but can you have too much clearance? I've got at least 3 mm using 5 thin clutch plates with 5 std (1.5 mm) steels. I can't quite get the 6 plates in because I haven't got any thin steels. I'm using a 3 mm top plate at the moment. Can I just add another 1.5 mm plate under the top plate to take up some free play? Will 3 mm free play make it slip or cause premature wear? (said the Bishop to the actress).
I'm using the Surflex Red plates but I'm wondering if it's a waste as using 5 std Surflex Brown plates will probably solve the problem. Then again that wastes yet another 24 hours soaking more plates.

BTW, I'm using one of the new "all singing and dancing" 5 to 6 plate clutch setups.

[Diablo]

Probably too much Martin and you may be asking the springs to do too much. Can you use thicker steels rather than top plate?

[soulsurfer]

Or get some thin steels and fit the sixth plate.
How thick are the friction plates Martin?
Cheers for the pm, I'll have a read

[corrado]

Or get some thin steels and fit the sixth plate.
How thick are the friction plates Martin?
Cheers for the pm, I'll have a read

Then I had a flasback and I remembered that I'd put a Cam Lam 6 plate kit aside for the RB20 kit so I took the steel plates out of that and used 6 Red plates.

Both the Red plates and the Green ones are 2.5 mm thick Mike but the Green ones are much lighter as they're alloy based as opposed to steel based for the Red ones.