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It wasn’t the clutch….
Yep, he's got it backwards...cable gets tighter as clutch wears. Rolling the adjuster forward (the most natural motion in the heat of battle) restores the slack.
Whats gonna be the excuse when Jett smokes Eli again next week?
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One week at a time, buddy!
Clutch blaster 😂
I noticed this in the live feed but I thought it was sand blasting off his rear tire
I've been a mechanic for 45 years, and a racer for 48 years, I don't think it was a clutch, to smoke like that for a number of laps, the clutch would have failed, after more than few laps of smoke, I ruled-out rear shock oil on the pipe, it did appear to me that there was a puff of smoke after some g-outs, my call is..... oil out of the engine breather onto the exhaust.
Matthes said on the review pod that it wasn't the clutch, it was the valve cover gasket that went. Thats what caused the smoke.
Valve cover gasket. He would have lost a tiny bit of oil onto the header.
He would not have noticed it at all like he said.
And everyone with theories are out the window.
valve cover gasket blows when compression is escaping from cylinder area into upper head area, due to valve seats and valves crunching sand, then when compression lets through the valve seals open. when valve seals open due to compression, head builds pressure, then valve cover gasket goes....
you cant run a bike in wet sand all day and not change head, valve seals.... i called it before hand. i knew it during the race, you cant ride a yamaha directly behind someone in sand, or your done.
With valve seals you normally see the smoke out the exhaust. The smoke from Tomacs bike was not coming out of the end of the pipe. It was more like oil leaking on the pipe close to the engine.
If the factory guy's have to do a service like that, I think they fill the engine from the top anyway.
agree.
I don't think they have the front intake anymore, dropped it in 23. I think his mechanic probably didn't get the gasket seated properly, or forgot to tighten down the bolts.
When the clutch wears out, meaning the fibers and the overall thickness of the plates get smaller, the lever gets tighter...
He had to know that smell was coming from him, and he would know how much he had left based on how much he had to adjust it!
Pit Row
You should quit before you get further behind.
Whatever it was....he finished the race and didn't lose a crap-ton of points. The Yamaha held together
When your valve seals go the bike smokes from the exhaust when you let off because with the throttle closed it sucks the oil past the valve seals. If it were the clutch it would be blowing out the ccv once it got hot enough to make the oil smoke from that point on, not just momentarily. Like said above it was most likely from the valve cover gasket as it seemed to only smoke when he had a g out and the oil dripped on the exhaust. Also like said above that would have no adverse effect on the performance of the bike. Sucking sand in and causing wear on valve seals, or rings would constitute smoking from the muffler. This was not the case.
Correct. Eli also said the bike was fine and he didn't notice the smoke. There was no excuses made by Tomac other than he got beat. Class act and hope he comes out swinging in AL.
Not sure if he really didn't know it or not...but 100% agree that the door to make a mechanical excuse was wide open when the question was asked. Prompts to Tomac for keepin it real.
Ah, my old school is showing. A lot of the older models push the clutch pressure plate away when the clutch lever is pulled. The newer design (1973/74) on some makes changed the effort to pull the pressure plate away.
My apologies for being stuck in the 70's
You don't hit the quad with a smoked clutch, he hit it later in the race. And no way shock oil squirting onto the exhaust either that's ridiculous cuz you aint hitting the quad with a blown shock either! It wasn't steam I don't think because he would be losing power and you don't hit the quad with power loss! but an oil leak of some kind and prob from the vent hose.
They said it was oil coming out of valve cover gasket, which makes perfect sense based on where the smoke seemed to come from and aligns with Eli's comments that he didn't feel anything. Also aligns with the G outs coming with more smoke as the compression forces of the G-out would likely cause more oil to leak under the suspension compression stress and hit the exhaust, thus causing smoke.
The 23-24 doesn't suck air from the front unless they are running a vented air box cover. Wouldn't think Star would have problems sucking dirt and the 450s only got one practice session because it poured at the start of the 250s second practice so they canceled the second 450 practice and worked on the track.
Like the shock would never piss out oil on the G-outs. You guys are a hoot.
Anyone remember the exact same thing happening last year?
Post a reply to: Why the Tomac smoke out the rear?