Spline lube - couple questions

[sh00ter]

Started the season with my first spline lube attempt. About 4 hours to disassemble.  Splines dry as a bone. Have a couple questions for the experts:

1) a small amount of grit fell into the final drive assembly when I took the sensor off the top (despite duck's strongly worded warning). What to do about this? Disassemble? Flush of some sort? Ignore?

2) is it worth checking the clutch while I'm in here? What's the easiest way to do so? About 20k on the bike ('94 k11rs)


Thanks in advance.

[552255]

1. Drain gear oil, strain thru filter...coffee type?  reapply.
Otherwise don't worry, I've had small pebbles fall into a spark plug hole...upon running it was pulverized into dust...

2.  No sure about the clutch check, I've just lubed the spline with a long painters brush, thereby saving the inordinate amount of work of actually removing the transmission.

[ttown95LT]

The clutch should be good with only 20k on the clock, but does solely depend on how the bike has been operated.  I have just finished up my spline lube, at 60k, clutch plate was on the verge of coming apart, but was also worn down within 1mm of rivets on both sides.

[Pagman]

This forum keeps its users well informed about lubricating the splines, but I haven't read about the repercussions of avoiding this step. Can damage occur or is it just an issue of smoother performance?

[Scott_]

Yes, damage can occur, that's why the splines had lube on them in the 1st place from the factory.
Problem was that the factory grease dried and gummed things up and made the situation worse than if they were totally dry to begin with.

A bad condition can strip out the spline hub of the clutch disk, worst case can strip BOTH the input hub of the clutch disk AND strip the ridges off of the input shaft of the transmission.

The older K-bikes(pre-1100's) has transmission input shaft splines that were a little softer. When the 1100's came to market BMW made a change in that the shaft was hardened more to handle more torque. Or at least that what Duck has said over the years......... YMMV.