AJS & Matchless Owners Club

On cleaning out my AMC clutch on my G11, with 3 springs, I noticed that I have a mix and match of friction and plain plates.
I have two thickness of friction plates, 2 thick and 3 thin. The tangs on the thicker ones are slightly bigger.
I have two types of plain plates, 1 with larger tangs and 5 with smaller tangs. The smaller tangs are a very loose fit in the basket.
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The book says I should have 5 plain and 4 friction.
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Should the tangs be a close fit ?
What is the consequensies of them being loose?
Do you think there are one plain and one friction plate extra because of the thinness of 3 of the friction plates?
Does any of this matter if it works?
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I can see from numerous other posts various different answers, does anybody have a definitive take on this?

Tangs are not that tight, free movement more important. Cleaning off burs will make a looser fit, but may be required. I have a mixture of old as found at auto jumble plates in most of my bikes. Mixture of cork and fibre. In 30 years they still work OK, only needed a good clean twice in 30 years, to stop a little slipping, when kick starting the engine. Also a mixture of old springs, probably of different tensions. Adjusted up so plates parts evenly.
The clutch works fine, so why bother about new? What have I to gain? I could only get a working fine clutch with new plates, but they may not work fine. You know when something can be trusted. New also has to prove its also trustworthy. Better the devil you know. One bike had a brand new complete clutch. By the time restoration was completed it had all glued up and had to be replaced. 2 new clutches, yet some of the old original plates dumped in the spares box, are still in use on other bikes.

Martin

I find that the smaller tangs, if substantially smaller, will burr quicker as I believe they hit the basket with more force than the longer ones, ideally they should all be the same size however the clutch will still work if you use then, if yours are only marginally smaller there should not be a problem.

Thanks for the advice.
The tangs on the friction plates are more or less the same size with a bit of wear.
On the plain plates the tangs are about half the size they should be.

From another post I found a list of plates from Andover Norton. It looks like the majority of ones I have got are a smaller size tang. (if that's the right word)and a different code number.
As you say they have rutted the clutch inner, and were very burred.
I have ordered the correct ones.

Also from other posts, I see some people soak their inserts in petrol to clean out the oil.
I have read in the service guide that you should avoid petrol and use triclhoroethalyne (not sure if that is spelt right) and fullers earth.
What I did was clean them with petrol, and then put them in a bowl of cat litter (fullers earth) to draw out any residual fluids.

Hopefully the plates will come soon and I can put it back together.

All back together now.
Putting the clutch back together I decided that there were two many plates in the basket and it was over full.
I removed one set of plates and am back to the number it says in the book.
Replaces the springs as they were different lengths.
The clutch works fine.

I have also fitted the new style seal from AMOC spares to the steel chain case.
Works at treat. no oil leak any more.