Got the foot-rest off. It needs an SAE 5/8 ring spanner held up against the inside of the frame bracket while you undo the foot-rest bolt with a socket. Slid off the chaincase cover and lo! There was the clutch!
The plates are not flush with the outer edge of the basket. They are sunken in by about 0.5mm. But the clutch pushrod adjustment was all up the shoot and this was the source of the clutch slip. The clutch-centre adjuster had simply been done up too tight. This I could have found out by unscrewing the dinky little inspection cap in the outer primary and gazing through it! I told you this was the “dumbass” etc etc.
Correct adjustment, according to The Book, is to slacken off its locknut, back off the adjuster, then turn it in until the pressure plate just begins to rise. Then back it off again by one complete turn, and do up the lock-nut.
My good friend Kevin says that if he had one dollar for every time I've said "The Book says ..." then he'd have a fully-restored 1938 Indian Four to play with by now.
Phil Pilgrim says "The Book is wrong. Don't back the adjuster off by one whole turn. Back it off only by about the width of a fanny hair. Make sure the cable is first disconnected from the handlebar grip when you do the clutch pushrod adjustment."
If you don't do it this way, then you can find that the clutch arm inside the gearbox endcover at the other end of the clutch pushrod will end up at the wrong angle, and this will cause a distinct "click" when you pull the clutch lever all the way in. There shouldn't be any "click" if the adjustments are all done correctly.
Next, on a whim I drained all the oil and removed the sump plate from the frame. I applied Master-gasket on either side of the paper gasket, then put it all back together again.
I also tried to get both high and low beam on the headlight to be working, but to no avail. It must be wired wrong, since both bulb filaments look to be okay.
Took the bike for a blat out to Sawani and back – a good one-hour run over a twisty hill road through a mahogany forest. Yee-haaaar!!! All went well, except that the 2nd to 3rd gearshift is playing up again. Otherwise, the bike runs good and strong, and idles reliably at the traffic lights.
