Understanding clutching

Viktory2k1

Viktory2k1

VIP Member
Joined
Dec 10, 2014
Messages
654
Age
53
Location
Waukesha, Wisconsin
First off, sorry if this is redundant or long winded. I am still having trouble understanding how clutching works. I know what it does but not how it works. Today I got somewhere. I bought a Hi-Tech ER roller clutch from a member here and it arrived today. So i'm staring at this thing wondering how it works(I bought it to spite someone local, the guy who closed his hood on me when I inquired about his clutch and pulled out a camera). I called a guy Duane from there and he explained a little about it. Then he told me to take it apart. I was thinking "now, on the phone?" He asked if I was done yet and I said I thought he was kidding. He said no, take it apart and I will show you how it works. So I'm in 5f degree temps taking this thing apart with one hand and trying to shoulder the phone at the same time(he didn't know it was mounted to a clutch). He told me to check some key areas, rollers for flat spots, I said yes, any marks or damage to cam, I said yes and told him what I saw. He told me it needs updated rollers and has(or had) the wrong nuts to hold it together, thats why the helix was ground down some, from hitting the washer on nut. I told him the background of why I bought it and he really got interested and asked me what I know about basic clutching. I really didn't have much to say just this does that and that does this. He said good, I will teach you how and why to clutch a snowmobile. I told him the sled I have and told him what I've done to it. I told him and he said to leave the motor alone and we will get that sled up to his standards. I was like oh no, what am I getting myself into. First, I have to send him this thing just the way it is and he will go through it, while on the phone. Then he will school me on what he knows about clutching. I told him about a cam some ebayer is trying to sell me for this and he said to buy it. Its a good start for what hes going to do. The cam I found by accident is 52/44 hi-tech for $40 with some titanium spring. He said I will probably be throwing the spring away so I'll try to get it cheaper without it. He started explaining flyweight profiles and I had to stop him because that part is over my head. He said he has to keep going and whatever he told me made perfect sense for almost an hour. I kept thinking about it and it got foggy on me so I don't want to think about that anymore, baby steps. He explained it like a clock at 6 then at 9 and 10 and why weight in different areas is so important. He said I am a good candidate for him because I didn't learn clutching from a guy in a bar that doesn't know what he's talking about. At one point he tried to explain the new clutch he designed, the 6 pack paragon. I looked it up. $2000. This was a 45min phone call twice because his website locks when you click on a link most of the time and I needed the address. He told me engineers think he is crazy and his designs will never work and he proves them wrong over and over. Another thing I never really realized was when the secondary opens or upshifts, the movable sheave actually turns against the way the belt is turning creating friction.
I gotta end this soon
He is very passionate and a nice guy for all the time(so far)he spent on me. If he can get me to understand this, he will do the impossible. Supposedly, my sled stock motor will put 15% more hp to the track then it is now. If I were to buy the paragon, it would put 25% more hp to the track. He liked the setup that is on there but thats a button style, very inefficient.(his words)
I wonder if 15% more hp to track = 50% less money in wallet. He will see what he can do about leaving primary alone except it probably will need lighter weights for his secondary setup. Also it needs the adjusters I bought from another member here. Now its over to Mrviper700's tech write up on clutching again. I love that article, I'll feel like I understand something for a while. Someone on here recommended a book to read but I can't find the thread or where I wrote it down. I have to get serious about this now and learn this. I thank the members on here for all the help and was never steered wrong by anyone here. It's just one of those things that is hard for me to make sense out of. PC courses are easy to me compared to clutching. Anyway, I hope i'm not making a mistake. Any thoughts, criticism, whatever, please comment.
Thanks

P.S. I wonder if that guy with the suspension thats sacked out ever fixed it.
 

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Aaen clutch tuning handbook. You can find free downloads online with some searching. There used to be some links floating around here. Not sure if they're still out there. As for the roller secondary they have their place but straight line racing (which you post about quite a bit) isn't one of them in my opinion. I'd get the aaen book even if you have to buy it and read it front to back 3 or 4 times and skip the 45 minute phone call/sales pitch. Jmo
 
Yeah, I did a little searching for that book and most links lead me to a pay download page, but I know how to fix that. That was another night I couldn't sleep. There is a long winding channel that connects one part of the lake to another and thats fun to race on but I always loose. Its maybe 20 feet wide and 3/4 mile long and twists and turns through the cat tails. Its really fun but the problem is I cant see whos coming the other way and everyone likes to hug the inside and just go full bore. I'll catch up on the straights but fall behind on the corners. A very good place to test clutching because your on and off the gas and braking into the corners. I just don't like the blind corners.
I'll go pro it. Its fun.
We call it the road course.
Its also a main thoroughfare.

I may as not do anything to sled because there never anyone to ride with, and I have 3 sleds. A buddy might come over today but unlikely.
 
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Best clutch setup for great performance and little tinkering once it's dialed was the Heavy Hitters for me. I have turned some die hard SRX owners to them too and they will never go back to anything else. I put over 9,000 miles on my set up and when I sold the sled I sold them on here to an SRX owner. The bushings in the wt arms still looked and spec'd out perfect when I sold them. They are the ticket for Viper and SRX owners. Tons of adjustability and rock solid durability. We had two sets of them, one in my machine and one in my father's machine before he hung up snowmobiling at 76 yrs old. I did my research before I purchased anything and spent a bunch of time talking with Jeff Simons of Simon CPR about clutch setups, he steered me towards these. Jeff has a ton of hours dyno tuning this machine and has a wealth of knowledge about this engine. This may sound like a sales pitch but I wouldn't even consider anything else on a 2 stroke Viper. I knocked off allot of bigger machines with mine and that told me the HH's were a winner. Just need good traction to go with the package. Best all around track for the job is the Predator. I tried about 5 tracks in my experience but I'd say the Predator by Camoplast was the best overall.

Over the years I have had about a hundred or more of PM's about setting the HH's up when people want to go with them. I can tell you this much, just call Lonn at Thunder Products and he will get you real close.

PS: I don't hang out on this side of the fence much anymore. I finally went four stroke with an Attak last year and am more current on that side.

Good Luck!!
 
Yes I have read all the articles. Last night I reread most of them. Mrvipers are the best for me. I like the HH idea for learning. I don't want to be misunderstood. I am not trying to get the perfect setup, mrviper helped me there. I am trying to understand exactly how any why he came up with those parts. I think I will have to experiment, get the adjustable weights and put those tensioners on the clutches and see what does what. My first plan is to get and read that book. Then mount the gopro under the clutch cover and record them working at different speeds and watch the vid in slow motion(watch the belt blow and take out the camera). I dont want to buy 100 springs and weights and helixes to experiment so the adjustable ones sound good, those work like heel clickers right? I clutched my wildcat with very little help and it works perfectly, I think mostly by luck. Pin it and rpm is a few hundred lower then the max power rpm and it climbs up to peak rpm and thats what mr viper said these srx's like and it seems all motors act like that. I was debating whether to get a 46 or 48 for the finishing angle and went with the 46 because soon that sled is going to be dealing with the track thats in my srx now, its on the heavy side with my million studs. If this msg sounds weird its because its been almost 48 hours without any real sleep and I don't know why. I'm so tired but cant sleep. Anyway Does this sound right? I picked the lighter finish angle helix for the wildcat because when the track starts spinning faster around 45-50mph, the track weight will multply and the angle will keep it from overshifting. That was my idea. Or am I totally off on that? By looking at a dual profile helix, it switches angles halfway down, Is this right? Not that I think 2 degrees would make that much of a big deal. I want to experiment with that roller clutch because to change preload, instead of putting spring in a different hole(which I can do also)all I have to do is loosen 3 nuts and turn the outside cover. By the looks of it, there is enough adjustment there to act like 2 or 3 different holes.
To clarify(to myself if not everyone)I am reading all this stuff but need to see what does what. One area I am struggling with is the primary spring rates, why get a super heavy spring with super heave weights? Say the weights have the exact same profile, couldn't you use a light spring and light weights and accomplish the same thing? I know you would have to match the secondary. Do the weights have to be that heavy for more belt clamping force at a lower rpm?(this one gives me a lot of trouble to understand)
I'll write more later, starting to feel weird like faint or something. This could be the big sleep time. I'm sure the cats will keep me up somehow. One of them is really interested in how a cd-rom drive opens on a pc. He saw me take a disk out now won't leave it alone. I might be falling asleep now, sweet! I'll be on today later hopefully much later. Wow, it almost 6am, I'll end up sleeping all day.
Thanks and G-nite............
 
MrViper is a very informed guy here. Knows his stuff.

As for trying to sift through your ramblings....in a nut shell the taller angle helix will upshift faster and vice versa for a shallow angle. Now for trail riding the straight angle helix's are better in most cases because they will backshift better, meaning when you let off the gas in a corner and then hit it again, they are right there. The multi angle helix's are common in cases where you are racing and can fine tune to your engine HP and torque curve. Maybe an initial quick upshift then a final angle that is less aggressive for holding your desired rpm. Normally you want to run as low of twist on the spring as you can get away with without belt slippage. Much of this is trial and error, but with a machine that's been around awhile you can get some pretty close info from previous owners of the same machine. I did tons of trial and error testing with my older Yamaha's when I was a younger man but don't have the time to mess with it anymore. Give yourself time and with years of tinkering you will begin to take a grasp on it. I did most of mine the old school way. We left one machine constant for a benchmark and did the tinkering to the other to see if you were gaining or losing ground.
 
Thats a good idea about the tinkering, I re read my last post. WOW was I not feeling well, I had trouble making sense out of it myself. I got the angle of helix good on paper, but need real time understanding. There is a guy on ebay with a bunch of used clutch parts for cheap which I might buy just to experiment with. I love the setup now. I just need to experiment. I looked at the adjustable weights and the only way I would buy them is used. I am still going to mess with that roller setup. One question about the adjustable weights, all they do is shift their weight from one area or another, right? Loosen them and more shoulder weight and less tip weight and vise-versa? What if you had one a little off then the others? That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. When I mentioned about the wildcat setup, the only problem I was having was the secondary spring. I picked out everything and ran it past an old cat guy and he said the spring was way too light. So I took his advise and got the heavy spring. I don't remember the rates but all I can say is to change a hole or reassemble it for any reason(I do it on the sled) you gotta put all your weight into it to twist it and line up the bushing and studs. Man that thing is tight. I wonder how it would run with the spring I had chosen? A good point is this is a Yamaha site, the ppl here who are amazing at clutching these sleds know clutching inside and out. What would happen If I asked advise for clutching on some odd ball sled, say my John Deere? Would you look at a dyno chart and see where the power curve is and give me a recommendation? Or would you be lost? (I'm being hypothetical) I am not sure about other sleds of my 98 vintage but I think Yamaha is the only one that has different weight profiles for the same weight. I know Cat didn't. Don't know about Polaris or Ski-Doo. By the time I get to the point where I can make a decent recommendation to someone for clutching setups, It will be obsolete. But I have to start here and slowly move up. Oh, I did get that book on clutching. I got a PM and someone emailed a PDF of it to me. I have new reading material. I was just thinking how neat it would be when I could give someone guidance on a clutch setup. I think mrviper is staying away from this one because he has explained some of clutching quite a few times to me and he knows a pretty big problem with my sled (which will be taken care of soon)and its kind of embarrasing to ask him the same questions over and over and still not get it. I dont ask unless its something new or I go read his tech literature. Its just something I have to figure out on my own with a little help along the way. I can build PC's from scratch and mod (overclock) cpus and memory with pretty good results. I learn the operating system behavior and can setup almost anything. I can repair most LCD monitors. But this clutch stuff baffles me. I got the basics, very basics like a big wheel spinning at a set rpm coupled to a small wheel, the small wheel will spin faster stuff. Thanks for the input. I misinformed someone on a post and gotta go fix it.
 
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just keep testing and tuning, mark your clutches to see if your getting full shift out, watch the rpm and check the heat of the clutches after making passes with it. All clutches do the same thing, different components help get you their FASTER or QUICKER.
 
No powder, maybe 8" of very hard snow with a dusting on top. Good for traction though but very bumpy on lake, thats where I ride since trails are closed and thats plenty. I have all the parts written down for my setup because I want to keep it that way but I am going to use that sled for experimenting. Oh that box of clutch parts junk was sold and not to me. So many varibles. I think a good place to start is put my stock parts back on so I can have a single angle helix for starters. I will break down and buy some rivets, I cant remember if the stock weights had rivets or if they did, which ones. Start with empty weights, then put rivets in the tip, see what happens, take those out and put some in center, see what happens. Once I see what the are doing, then do the spring. I only have 3 springs but thats better then nothing. Try different springs and note that. Then start mixing it up with rivets. Put it back to stock and do the same with secondary, I only have 2 springs and helixes. Change holes with the stock setup to see how much rpms change. then see what a heavier spring does in different holes. Stuff like that, so I know what changes what. Heres a question, say I take a spring and put it in the highest wrap hole, would that act just like a different spring in the lightest wrap hole? Oh no, I just remembered there are 3 holes in the clutch, well gotta figure out why there is. No way can I go full bore with the lake conditions, we'd need at least 6" of fresh snow for that. No way am I going to figure this out in one season. This is the first season I have ever messed with clutching and never had a desire to learn about it until MrViper told me a nice setup. To this day I never thought changing that stuff would make even a noticable difference. It was like the motor suddenly had another cylinder. I would have never believed clutching would do that. Ever since then I've had this urge to learn all about it. Ive had motors apart and sleds ripped apart but mostly just rode them the way they were. The problem is this stuff is expensive. Just my OEM cam was like $100. I thought it would be like $75 to do the whole thing. Not even close.
I can do alot of this during the rest of this season because"its too cold to ride" and I cant get my kid to ride one if his life depended on it. I think I am going to pursuade him more because I think he will like it. I think I took him for a ride once and never went past 30mph. Most of the time hes either with his gf or just screwing around on the computer. I don't think he will ever move out.
Anyway, Thanks for listening.
Vic
 
I don't think MR.Viper, Yammigod, Turk or any other clutch Guru magically figured out how clutching works. I am in no way shape or form being mean but just explaining something to you. They all probably had sleds and just literally messed with them, put different setups between gears, studs, springs and cams and wrote it down and started to understand how each object effects the recipe. Mr.Viper always relates clutching to cake, with out the exact recipe the cake will not taste so good. BUT when baking a cake, there are a ton of ways to make that cake taste good....trust me ask your wife/gf or even mom lol. When I started working with clutch on sleds, I did ask questions just like you and then people stopped answering, start going to swap meets and picking up springs, weights, and new cams for dirt cheap, buy gears and start thinking in your mind how things work, think real deep. Look in the tech pages and look at the different shift patters of each weight, understand that and do some research. Use the search bar, there are a lot of old threads about heel clickers, 8ca,8ab, 8bu-00 or 8bu-10, 89-10A, 8ek, 8dn-10/20 and so on. I have a read so much that you wouldn't believe the dumb little stuff that I know and how to find it. Lol its kinds of funny because I do a lot of racing one weekend and then the next I will do a lot of back country riding. I can take my clutch apart and have new spring, weights and rollers in it with 10 mins. I can now kind of think in my head of what I will be doing with the sled and throw in a set up and it will work okay I just need to fine tune it for the temp and always have to control the shift whether I wrap the spring less or more. Instead of learning how clutching works, narrow down what you want to learn, learn more about the effects of different parts and clutching will become more understandable to you. This is how I learned, TRIAL AND ERROR. And trust me, I still haven't figured it out totally lol, I still get stumped and get pissed off and lose lots of races BUT I sure as hell like having fun with it!
 
Yes, Thats where I am with this. Lastnight I tried looking at the weight profile page but I think the site was updating because I couldn't click the next page. Yeah, If I post a clutch question, very little replies. I'm pretty much at the trial and error stage of this. I like that, switch clutch setup depending on whats up in 10 minutes. I'm getting low on the funds as of now so can only use what I already have.
 
Ok, I was having the same issue, so with 4.5 rivets, I am running 51 grams of weight with 8DN 20. Sweet.
Another question, There is no spec in service manual for belt deflection. I would think thats important, I found all other specs but that one. Does anyone know what it is suppose to be?
 
You guys can all page through that section fine with the weights? I may have a problem with my browser running scripts or something. I use firefox.
 
What is dane bread? ok I have secondary all apart now and am installing the outer deflection knob thing. My belt sits just inside the driven clutch. I removed all 3 inside bolts and none have any shims and I can see where bolts contacted the stop ring. What did someone do to this thing? I'll try some small washers and see what happens.
 
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I got it all set to spec. I think I fixed a few issues as well. Mine had no shims on back side of clutch under the 3 bolts. This caused 2 things, belt too far down in clutch, and bolts rubbing on stop. My C to C is 10 5/8", offset is 16mm with no shims behind clutch shaft. Nice. I checked the belt sticking out of clutch, 2mm so I tightened adjuster 1/2 turn and am about a hair more then 1mm sticking out. Everything is in spec now. I wasn't wearing my gear just shop clothes so I couldn't get a good test in(-3F at that time). I rode it around the yard a few times. Now I know why I could never hook up, those spacers were gone so it was like starting out in 2nd gear, well, I wouldn't go that far but was not right. Now it wants to lift skis a little on hard packed snow, before it would just spin like a snowblower. Its kind of hard to get a good measurement of belt because clutch edges are a little chewed up from that torque rod bolt working its way out last year. The roller one has a very nice clutch on it. Later I will test it on the lake just for holeshot. This thing was screwed up from not having those little spacers. Bolts rubbing on stop as clutch twists open, that 1hp more to the track at launch and the belt down too far, thats probably like 3hp I can't say it was way down there, spec says to add aspacer at .5mm down and it was right around there. Another 1/2 hour looking for the spacers that weren't there to begin with. I had 2 bolts out until I noticed there was nothing on them so I'm looking on floor, in the clutch wondering how I could have lost them until I looked at the remaining bolt and none there either. I will start the tests I mentioned earlier with changing things this afternoon. That external adjuster works good. I didn't mess with the primary one. Once installed, I tightened it until it just made contact. I really want to test that roller out. That should work really good with the movable sheave twisting with the belt instead of backwards, probably get a lot more life out of a belt. I'd try it sooner but the rollers need to be replaced and a dual angle helix(if the guy ever sells it). Now I'll never have a problem with the weight profile pages, Dane bread will stick in my head forever. I gotta see how those words were used in the original post.
 

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