Yeah, really loud. I have good hearing, but still... It's significantly louder (and worse far worse sounding) than the cam chain noise ever was.

Even with all the wind and normal bike noises at 70 mph or so WOT, I can hear it plain as day. Of course the lever is almost literally under my nose, so I suppose it should be relatively easy to hear.

I just pulled it apart and greased it, but it is pretty loose fitting and I suspect it will still be noisey. We'll see...at least I know what it is now.

 

Aha, glad you found it! However, if you would have always had a finger on the clutch lever as you should have, you never would have noticed the noise at all.

 

Good jab! However...False! Even with two fingers on the clutch as normal, it still happens. It's only silenced with a significant amount of pressure, i.e. starting to pull the lever in, or pushing down on the lever. Just resting my fingers on top of the lever isn't enough pressure to stop it.

 

Touche!

Glad you got it figured out, man.

 

I'm glad too.

Another update - greasing the lever pivot and contact points seems to have silenced the lever. ...At least for now.

 

Lutz, is your lever perch spread too far open or such? Also, hows the bushing in the lever itself? It sounds like there's a lot of play in there for some reason.

 

No, the perch is in good shape and the whole setup is still relatively tight. It's worn some, but it's closer to the new end of the spectrum than the old-rattley-dirtbike end.

I'm not sure if it's the same part as the '06/'07 bikes, but it's actually quite rigid at the pivot bolt; in other words tightening the bolt does not cause the perch gap to close up, like it can on other bikes. On my old KDX, if the lever rattled, I could just tighten the pivot bolt to squeeze the perch together.

 

Eh, might as well update this again.

The grease at the pivot point did work to silence the clutch lever rattling...but only for a while. The rattle did come back as the grease was worked out of the pivot. Long term, I'll either keep greasing it periodically, or just let it rattle and know what it is...or maybe replace it with a different lever.

 

I rest a finger on my clutch lever most of the time... Can't do that with the lock key on my key ring that rattiles on the bars.

 

LOL don't feel bad, we have all missed things like this before. What you shared might help the next person looking for the same issue. ROCK ON MAN!