FH - clutch

 We left the Huntmaster earlier this week with the clutch basket fitted loosely. After a busy few days doing other stuff I had a few moments this afternoon to progress the clutch.

The clutch basket tab washer is quite difficult to access. All the post war Ariel clutches use this washer so I've fitted a few of them by now. What you have to do is to bend the edges up in the vice before you fit the washer to the clutch basket.

When you have fitted the washer and the screws and tightened them up to your satisfaction, you can use a thin chisel and a bit of round bar to tap the tab washer up against the flats of the screws.

With that bit done, you can move on to the clutch centre. I have bought a few clutch baskets new from the AOMCC gearbox spares specialist recently and they come disassembled. You have to fit the clutch springs studs to the clutch centre - I used red Loctite for this, and you can rivet the backside of the stud in place.

The next job will be to rivet the backside of the spring studs:

The routine here is to centre punch the stud, then form the river head with the ball pein of your hammer. In fact, that produced an over-long rivet head that fouled the clutch basket screws, so these studs had a little go on the linisher before the second attempt at forming a (shallower) head:

The vague dome shown above is fine. You can just about see the stud has mushroomed into the holes that the AOMCC thoughtfully countersunk (countersank?) for them.

Next step is the tab washer. These are supplied flat, but need a little crank to fit:

The clutch holding tool comes in handy here, allowing you to hold the basket and centre still while you heave on the clutch centre nut:

For the record, the tab washer is bent up to hold the nut from shaking loose:

That's almost it for the clutch; I assembled the plates, and realised that the pushrod protrudes too much which means either the adjustment is all wrong (I haven't touched it yet) or there are too many balls in the mainshaft. Either way, we need to go to the other side...