My buddy has a Daytona super 3 which has the same clutch set up as our steamers. He searched on the rat forum for this issue, but found nothing, and so I offered to share it here, as there seems to be a pretty great collective of diagnostic experience at tigertriple. In any case, here's the story:
He was going about 20 MPH and hit a very deep pothole which really jolted the bike. Any faster, and he said he would have been down. In any case, he pulled over to check his forks and shock for any seal leakage/damage, and found everything to be okay. Bike continued to run fine for a few miles, but then it became more difficult to shift. The clutch resistance and feel did not change, but the bike didn't want to downshift or go into neutral. Pulling over to check it, he found the shifting linkage loose where it attaches to the spline, and he tightened that up to normal, but there was no improvement.
Getting back home, he drained the clutch fluid (which he had recently changed), and it was really dirty. He put in fresh again, and re-bled the system. At this time, the bike shifts just fine when it is cool, but once it warms up, the shifting gets really difficult again. When it cools down, it works fine again.
My theory is that the pothole slamming the chassis buggered up the clutch pushrod seal under the clutch slave unit so that it is slightly out of alignment when it gets warmed up and begins to bind on the pushrod. In addition, he may have jolted one of his clutch plates out of adjustment or even broken a piece off so that when it warms up it is sticking. The dirty clutch fluid could possibly be contaminated by oil which has gotten past the pushrod seal and the piston seal in the slave unit, but if they are leaking, I think he would have lost all of his brake fluid into the engine oil and lost pressure on the clutch lever, which he did not. He did flush the system well when replacing the fluid prior to this, so I am not sure where the contaminant could have come from? A bent pushrod would not seem to be temperature sensitive, so I think that can be ruled out. Ditto for bent shifting forks.
Those are my thoughts, but never having had one of these clutches apart, I am just applying logic.
So again, the symptoms are:
1- Shifts hard when warmed up.
2- Shifts okay when cold.
3- Suffered a big slamming jolt preceding this.
4- Brand new clutch fluid was dirty and discolored after the jolting event.
Any creative thoughts would be appreciated!
first off I think the jolt has nothing to do with it ................
I tend to think the slave or master has gone tits up . the system is obviously full of rust .
I've seen peoples brake systems in the same state and had one that needed a new master after doing a system flush .
He is going to rebuild the slave with a new piston kit as step one. He has been riding this for shorter trips, but this was his first one over 300 miles. No issues until he hit the pothole. I know that coincidences can happen, but it does seem connected because of the timing. I hope that your diagnosis is spot on, as this would be an easy fix. Thanks!
Problem diagnosed and solved!
After taking the clutch basket apart for the second time, he noticed that the inner did not spin freely as it should, and it was the shim that was causing the issue. He made himself one a bit thicker, and now it works perfectly. Apparently as in many of their other diagrams and info, Triumph does not show the shim in the same diagram as the clutch basket, so seeing how everything interacts is not a simple thing.