Dished clutch plate missing

[MoriniMike]

I don’t have the dished plate in my clutch. Does anyone also run without one? What could be the possible faults resulting?
I’m suffering heavy gear change problems. Almost have to use force sometimes to get a gear and impossible neutral selection. It’s a ‘78 3 1/2 with a nylon clutch inner ring and a spacer. Tarrozi rearsets.

[huub]

my 75 strada and sport came without the dished plate from the factory, so no harm done'.
for the gearchange I would have a close look at the tarozzi and the gear lever,
on my morini's finding neutral at a standstill is difficult. I learned to change into neutral while still riding.

[Steve Brown]

Without the dished plate I would expect the clutch to be more grabby than usual. They are even with the dished plate a more positive engagement than most Japanese clutches which are very smooth in uptake of the drive.
If you mean heavy gear selection all the time I think the problem is a gearbox/selector fault. Does it engage gear easily when the engine is not running? If you go through the gears with the engine off, is it easier?
If that is ok and the problem is changing gear when running then I'd suspect clutch drag-the plates not separating fully, so an adjustment problem or warped steel plates/gummed up friction plates etc.
Neutral is often hard to find on these bikes when stationary so don't concentrate too hard on that as a 'problem'. Try to select neutral when still rolling.
It's worth having the dished plate but it shouldn't give the trouble described here if it's missing-and sometimes the get flattened out over the years and the 'dish' is not easy to see. Try laying all the steel plates on top of each other, then you can normally see a gap where the dish is, about 1mm if you're lucky!

[norbert]

I´m not sure that the problem you describe comes from the missing dished plate, but I thinh it´s important to have one to avoid a digital clutch (all or nothing). As mentioned the neutral should be found while the bike is rolling.

This is a dished plate in good condition

file.jpeg (35.46 KiB) Viewed 2920 times

[MoriniMike]

Thanks for all the input. I’m thinking I’ve made a mistake with the placement of the spacer. But I’ll be having it apart soon. I’ll follow up on the result.