Stripped Clutch cover bolt

During the winter I replaced the starter clutch on my 4th gen.

I installed a new clutch cover gasket, applied a tiny bit of Honda bond, and got everything attached.

As I was tightening the clutch cover bolts I felt one of the lower bolts (under the dipstick) suddenly lose tension. (Even though my torque wrench was set to 9 ft/lbs.)

I left the bolt in there, tightened the rest and the bike has been running fine.

Today I noticed the area around the clutch cover was wet and oily...and not just the part near the loose bolt, but almost all around.
The lowest point of the clutch cover seems to have the worst of it as I could see a tiny drop of oil pooling and could see signs of a drip on the lower fairings.

I pulled out the loose bolt and it has aluminum on the threads. I'm assuming the threads in the crankcase are striped...yet this isn't where the leak is the worst...it's actually quite dry there.

Where do I begin? Pull off the clutch cover again?
How do I fix the stripped bolt hole?

Why is the clutch cover sweating oil all over?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

OUCH !! Sorry, Matt.

Clutch cover is one of those assemblies where you need to fit all bolts and hand-tighten in a diagonal pattern before you use any wrenches, best done in 2 steps, also in an opposite/diagonal pattern. Drill hole larger and use a coil insert would be my guess for a fix. Gotta be sure not to pinch any wires between cover and engine case.

 

I checked the starter clutch on my 1995 a few days ago, and when putting my clutch cover on the bolt directly above the dip stick did the same thing. I believed that I had stripped the thread, took the bolt out, loctited it and put it back. The pressure is probably only about 3 lbs. on this bolt. The rest are fine.

I haven't ridden the bike yet because of the weather. If it does leak in the area of that bolt my intention is just to put silicone in that area, and that should do stop any leaks until I get round to fixing the thread.

I would think that the oil is escaping from the bad bolt area and just running along the gasket. I can't imagine that it is leaking anywhere where the gasket is tightened to spec.

 

According to BikeBandit there are 2 bolts different than the others? Longer ones.

Maybe that's what happened? Stuck the short bolt in the spot meant for a longer one?

 

I think you may have solved it. When I took the bolts off I very carefully arranged them in the same order that I took them off. However when I put them back in, on the left side where the problem is for me, I got them out of sequence. The bolt that is loose felt pretty much loose from the outset, without me cranking it much at all. Will have to check bike bandit to see which ones are the longer ones.

 

I'm guessing...and just guessing...that the 2 longer bolts are the ones with the dowls?

...and I'm only coming to this conclusion cause there are 2 longer bolts and 2 dowls

 

That's correct, the 2 longer bolts go with the dowel pins.

When putting in small fasteners use a smaller torque wrench, especially if using the clicker type.

12 ft-lbs is barely clicking on the ft-lb scale wrenches, but 144 in-lbs is up in the mid range of the smaller in-lb wrenches. The big wrenches can very easily overdrive at the low end.

ft-lbs are for used to tighten lug nuts, in-oz and in-lbs are better for small screws into aluminum, carburetors, etc.

you might be able to chase the threads with a bottom tap and get a longer 6mm bolt to put into the same hole.

 

I don't torque the bolts on my outer covers. I use my 1/4" tools, good gasket sealant and german torque them (guten tight). Hopefully its the wrong bolt issue. If you actually stripped the whole thing out, you can sometimes use the next size up blind hole tap and thread for the next bigger bolt.

Jose

 

Sounds like a brilliant solution to me !

I trust my educated wrist better than any torque wrench for smaller screws/bolts.

It saves a alot of time upon reassembly to make a cardboard template of the clutch cover and place each removed bolt in it's exact position.

 

So I did swap the larger bolt into that hole. I started tightening it and it started to feel like it was stripping the threads again so I stopped.

The problem is the cover is still leaking. I dunnoh why, and I'm probably going to have to pull the cover off again to try and fix the leak.

Hopefully when I pull that bolt out it won't take the last of the threads with it.

What's the general consensus of these covers? No Honda-bond? I added a very fine bit to both sides of the new gasket...in hopes of preventing the sorta leak I have now.

 

The last time i pulled that cover i just ran a 1 mm wide bead of the high-temp red silicone sealant on just the cover flange and let it sit and get tacky for about 10-15 minutes before reassembly, ran all the cover screws in by hand to pull the cover in and compress the custom "gasket".

This was after using a gasket scraper and razor blade, etc. to remove every trace of old gasket from both the cover and the engine flanges, and then using alky-hawl to clean the surfaces and let them dry.

1. Did you clean the surfaces to remove all residue?

2. Using the oem clutch cover gasket AND honda bond may have been too much material to get a good "crush" at the sealing surface, plus it created additional interface surfaces not necessarily uniformly thick and even. i think you could use one or the other, but not both.

 

I tend to agree with him. I took my bike for a spin today and there were no leaks from the cover, even from the area of the bolt that was loose. The only sealant I used was at the bottom of the cover, and a very small amount barely 2 mm wide.

 

Ok. Thanks everyone.


I'll try it without the sealant and hopefully the threads in the bolt holes are still there.