Clutchless, and it wasnt the cable this time! Advice sought

[NYcowboy]

Alright 9er techies, seeing as how I've only had mine for a whopping 8 days and 1,400 miles I'm gonna claim pathetic ignorance here, and seek some advice.

First though, a bit of backstory. This morning I set off on a nice 100 or so mile ride to catch up with some long lost family and friends up at the saratoga springs horse track. It was to be mostly highway riding (NYS thruway and Adirondack northway). After going ~60 miles and uppon leaving a tollbooth i got 2 shifts that felt like I was floating the gears (power shifting) as it turns out, I was. So I, being young dumb and stubborn to a fault, pressed on untill i got to a big parking lot at the saratoga airport (20 miles in traffic floating gears is no fun!) But after doing some diagnosing, found that by holding the clutch in, the starter has enugh oomph in 1st to get me going again from stalling the engine at every stop. After that some googling was done and a few calls were made and i limped off to the nearest suzuki dealer (20 miles back the other way). That turned out to be Seymours Motorized Sports in latham NY. Not bad people, but bearing bad news, quite bad. The cable hadn't failed as i had suspected. After their "specialists" did some poking around they told me this, and i quote:

Tech inspected- Found that cable is not broken- Checked bracket under cover for cable and that is not bent or otherwise damaged either. Tech determined that failure is internal- possible that the clutch basket nut has loosened and is not allowing clutch to fully disengage- this is merely speculation without disassembly.

My question is two fold. Have any of y'all ever experienced this kind of clutch failure, if so what was the real problem? Also am i a darn fool (probably) for riding it home in it's state and could I have damaged anything further? Heck, while i'm at it with the questions, do ya think now would be a good time to go ahead and have the tech's at my local stealership throw on one of them evo shift kits while they're monkeying around down there??

Any advice/opinions, no matter how biased or misguided, are much appreciated,
~NYcowboy

[pabohoney1]

Yes, this has happened to a few people on here. You should be able to find a topic or two about it by searching. Fairly easy to fix though. Impressive that the tech suspected what it was and is probably right. I'm guessing he's seen quite a few of these, which goes to show that Suzuki should have done something about this problem.

[pabohoney1]

http://pagreaves.com/109/clutch/clutch.htm

Also,

http://www.m109riders.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=127161

[Zoom]

It's a very common problem, way more often than it should be. And a lot of folks have disassembled their clutches just to loctite and tighten the tube nut so it won't happen to them out on the road.

[chesshine5000]

I had a VERY similar thing happen to me. I plan on picking my bike up from the dealer at the end of this week. I will get the full run down from him and post it up here: http://www.m109riders.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=158736. Is yours still under warranty, or maybe you bought a third party extended warranty? If so, it should be covered.

[Hawaiian9'r]

2 M109's and it happened twice. Welcome to the board!!!!

[109rfan]

Sorry to hear of your troubles Seymour's for the most part is a pretty good shop I always had it serviced there although the last trip Sean "the best" mechanic ripped half my LEDs out one wire was wrapped around my rear header well now your rear header. I'm sure they'll have you on the rd in no time. I did complain about the notorious clutch shudder but I always got the reply the mechanic could not replicate problem

[NYcowboy]

They seemed to be pretty good guys, let me tell ya, their service guy frank really knows his 9s. But I ended up bringing her home to my local ****zuki dealer, and while they're shoulder deep in my 9 I'm having the shift star put on and the motor mounts replaced. Figure I'll get most issues out of the way or avoided before i move 2000 miles away in august. And thanks to all of ya who replied with some help, being armed with some knowlege may be dangerous, but it's certainly helpful when i go to the shop! I guess I really am part of the community now, huh?

Sorry to hear of your troubles Seymour's for the most part is a pretty good shop I always had it serviced there although the last trip Sean "the best" mechanic ripped half my LEDs out one wire was wrapped around my rear header well now your rear header. I'm sure they'll have you on the rd in no time. I did complain about the notorious clutch shudder but I always got the reply the mechanic could not replicate problem

[GeorgiaRoller]

It's a very common problem, way more often than it should be.

+1

The damn clutch & transmissions on these bikes SUCK! There I said it. It's one of the main reasons I was scared to keep my 9 much longer. I can understand having some issues after 75,000 or so miles on the bike. But 1,400 miles or 10,000 or 15,000 miles tons of folks having clutch shudder or 2nd gear issues. Inexcuseable Suzuki!!!!

[109rfan]

good call on the mounts its due for those