Product: Rekluse Core EXP 3.0 Clutch

WHAT IS IT?

It’s the latest and most refined auto clutch from American clutch component specialist, Rekluse, and is designed to prevent stalling, and improve clutch durability and rear wheel traction. The kit differs slightly for each make and model of bike, and replaces everything in your OEM clutch except the basket, diaphragm spring (for DDS clutches) and fibre plates. In other words, you get the inner hub, pressure plate, steel plates, EXP plate, clutch cover and slave cylinder (for bikes with hydraulic clutches).

WHY WE RATE IT…

For starters, it improves the oil flow through your clutch, and reduces both the weight and wear of its components. It does take a bit to get used to the thing, but once you learn to trust in its ability to prevent your bike from stalling, you’ll find it astonishingly good. You can forget about the clutch lever altogether if you want (which is great if you bust your lever off and need to get back to the car in tech terrain), and that leaves you to focus on gripping the bars and choosing lines – which, when you’re tired or have arm pump, adds appreciably to your bike control. It tends to ‘make’ you use taller gears through turns, meaning better entry and corner speed and smoother power delivery on the exists (because, if you’re a gear or two too tall, the Rekluse automatically feathers clutch take-up better than the world’s best clutch slipper). But the best thing about the Rekluse is that it can also be used as a conventional clutch. The lever never goes slack, the take-up and modulation remain positive and predictable at all revs, and yet it’ll ensure you don’t stall the bike if you’re too aggressive on the rear brake or too abrupt with your clutch release. In other words, it offers the best of both worlds.

Any downsides? Well, the Rekluse does not automatically adjust for clutch plate wear, so you need to check the ‘installed gap’ and the lever’s ‘freeplay gain’ every few rides (this is done via a 4mm Allen Key adjustment in the Rekluse’s slave cylinder, which can be used to fine-tune how easily the lever overrides the auto clutch mechanism). This is a quick and easy process you soon get used to. What about bump-starting the bike with a Rekluse fitted? For a flame-out stall, this is not a problem, as you can simply hit your starter button instead. And if your bike’s battery fails and doesn’t have a kick-starter as back-up, you can turn the slave cylinder adjuster counter-clockwise to close the installed gap (effectively making it a manual clutch) and it’ll bump-start. As the Rekluse begins to disengage the clutch below 4-5000rpm, some guys are concerned about it causing the bike to ‘freewheel’ on slow downhills. We didn’t find this to be an issue because, when you’re that low in the revs, you’re usually on the brakes and would have a conventional clutch semi-disengaged anyway to prevent the bike stalling. One last thing to note: be careful not to leave your bike in gear after you pull up – cos if someone wanders by and blips the throttle, the thing will loop out.