Sounds like this is what went wrong with his clutch. That ball and ramp can fall out of place sometimes very easy if the cable is moved around via the clutch lever. For anyone doing this work. Make sure that when you go to adjust your pushrod that your cable is all the way loosened up and that when your looking down at the pushrod... Make sure that the ramp assy is sticking out around an 1/8". If i had a picture to put up it would be much eisier to explain. Basically, the inner part of the ramp ( the part that has the inner threads for the pushrods outer threads) has to stick out a little less than an 1/8" beyond the outer part of the ramp assy. There should be a lip. If it's flush then the adjustment will not work. That poping noise was the ramp going back into place. I'm sure he has all kinds of freeplay now. To get it back into place you might have to work at it a bit and sometimes can be a pain with the exhaust in the way. if the exhaust is off i will take the end of the rod and thread it in backwords so that you can use the rod to turn the ramp back into place. It's always worked for me.It sound to me like the Ramp on the Actuator is not lined up correctly. When you loosen up the clutch the ramp sometimes moves forward as you disassemble the clutch. Therefore when you pull the lever you have no clutch, it is very hard to pull. You need to loosen up the cable and push the ramp back toward the rear, next adjust the clutch and then adjust to cable.
Good Luck
Carlos
Sounds like this is what went wrong with his clutch. That ball and ramp can fall out of place sometimes very easy if the cable is moved around via the clutch lever. For anyone doing this work. Make sure that when you go to adjust your pushrod that your cable is all the way loosened up and that when your looking down at the pushrod... Make sure that the ramp assy is sticking out around an 1/8". If i had a picture to put up it would be much eisier to explain. Basically, the inner part of the ramp ( the part that has the inner threads for the pushrods outer threads) has to stick out a little less than an 1/8" beyond the outer part of the ramp assy. There should be a lip. If it's flush then the adjustment will not work. That poping noise was the ramp going back into place. I'm sure he has all kinds of freeplay now. To get it back into place you might have to work at it a bit and sometimes can be a pain with the exhaust in the way. if the exhaust is off i will take the end of the rod and thread it in backwords so that you can use the rod to turn the ramp back into place. It's always worked for me.
Aslo a good way to adjust the clutch is...with the cable all the way loose, turn your pushrod all the way in till it bottoms out. Now go up to your cable and tighten it up to take all the play out of your lever. Now go back to your pushrod and turn it back a 1/4 turn. This will leave you with 1/8" of free play. It works great every time and comes out the same every time. Keeps everything tight and in it's place.