can't be 100% sure but I've seen those before and they're just casting marks.

dye pen accumulates in any crevice and those casting marks will be a lot of false positives.

to get a true reading, you'll have to polish out all the marks then etch the surface because polishing will fill any cracks and etching will remove the fill.

Dumb question from the peanut gallery…. Why bother doing anything (sanding, etching, etc.) about the casting imperfections?  Haven’t they been there forever?  Seems like sanding it is purely cosmetic to me.

If oil ain’t coming out the other side, slap it back together.  Then if it develops a leak down the road, put a new case cover on it.  Those superficial marks don’t look like they’d develop into a full blown gusher.  Please don’t listen to me know.  Listen to the gurus.

The use of the diamond EZ-Lap was because it fell readily to hand, I didn't know if the shaft was going to be too hard to use a file to take off the burr, and the EZ-Lap isn't very aggressive and I didn't want to take off any more metal than necessary.  It likes any good small/smooth file will do the job.

Yes, my concern would be a case failure, and if you ever do spot oil starting to come through the case I'd expect that failure would be arriving shortly.  But if you can avoid using the clutch in that situation you'll avoid stressing the case and might be able to get home safely.

Would you guys recommend I buy a new clutch shaft arm? My bike has 25,000 miles, so now I thinking that putting a brand new cam on a used and worm shaft arm will cause significant play and wiggle.

I looked up the shaft arm and I can get it for $86. I don't want to spend the money if I don't have to, but if it provides peace of mind that a new one won't tear up the cam I don't mind paying for it.

I’d do the shaft/release arm while you’re already in there.  Unless the cable is damaged, it’s probably okay.  Cable lube it.

transam4life wrote on 05/27/24 at 11:05:59:


and a can of spray lube

OR

cut the corner off a small baggie just enough to slip over the end of the cable, seal the baggie to the cable by wrapping a rubber band around it, hold the baggie up a bit and pour some oil into it and then let gravity do its work.

It appears to me that the cam and shaft are kind of "pre-broken" from Suzuki due to the excess slop.  The wear you see on those corners seems to be the way they all end up sooner or later.  I think that right now instead of a new shaft you should buy some feeler gauge stock in different thicknesses and try to shim between the cam and shaft as DBM does.  It would be less expensive, and even if you get a new shaft and stock cam they should also be shimmed from the start.  Of course, you still have a potential sintered cam failure in your future.

Inspect your clutch cable where the cable goes into the soldered fittings at the ends.  The typical failure mode is for an end to get seized in the lever so it doesn't swivel freely, causing the cable to flex back and forth where it comes out of the fitting.  Eventually you get a fatigue failure there.  The lever at the case has a swivel fitting built in and should be fine but if the pivot pin is gunked up and binding you could have problems there.  But the hand lever is the usual spot as no one ever looks at the cable end hiding on the underside of the lever.  If you don't see any kinks or frayed wires, then give the cable a good lube (and relube it now and then).  If it seems to move smoothly inside the housing then I'd say it is probably fine to put back into use.  If you aren't doing a lot of stop and go traffic, then 99% of the time the cable is just sitting there without any tension/flex happening to it and it has no reason to wear.