Good news.  You are on your way. 

Looks like a good sled and sounds like you have a good question.  I can only speak from my own experience having popped about 100 or so of these clutches.  In all those times I have never had one that didn't come off and have never had one that damaged the puller.  I am still using the same puller that I started with 20 some odd years ago. Perhaps run a wire brush in the threads to clean them up before inserting the puller.

Our biggest problem has been with stubborn clutches that didn't want to budge and needed some pursuasion.  If they don't want to come we would  run the puller in as hard as we could and then take a decent sized lump hammer and give the end of the puller a blow right down the central axis of the crank.  If that doesn't work the first time we hit it with some PB blaster, let it sit and then go through the proceedure again.  They have all let loose.

And for what it is worth our 78 Intruder was always the favorite sled for all of our kids.  They fought each other to drive that one.

Hi All,
I just picked up a 1978 440 Intruder for $400.00. The body and most parts of the sled seems to be in good shape. I did a compression check and it seems pto side is at 80 psi and 110 psi on the mag side. So with that information I am pulling the engine to do a complete rebuild. So when I went to pull the drive clutch I removed the single bolt and went to thread in the clutch puller that I purchase from Dennis Kirk https://www.denniskirk.com/parts-unlimited/clutch-puller-kawasaki.p28146.prd/28146.sku
While trying to thread the puller in (by hand) it just feels like it is cross threading. When I remove the puller the threads on the puller look like they are being slightly damaged. My question, is this the right puller, or could there be enough corrosion on the clutch threads that it would go into the clutch with some difficulty? I've never removed a clutch before so I thought that the clutch puller would have threaded in by hand until it bottomed out on the crank with more ease.
Any comments would be helpful.

Thanks

JB

For the soft assemblies - aluminum to aluminum or aluminum to plastic - I am using 3/16 aluminum rivets.  For the structural assemblies - aluminum to steel - I am using 3/16 stainless rivets.

On the fuel tank bracket I think that you can choose either material.  I would normally pick the aluminum for this connection since it does not take a lot of stress and I seem to have to take them off more than once and aluminum is easier to drill.

With that said, if all else is good you may not need to remove the tank.  I have been successful inserting a new pick-up tube using a stiff wire inserted from the gas cap opening into the fuel fitting on the bottom of the tank then sliding the pick-up tube over the wire and pushing it down onto the fitting.

Either way, good luck with the repair.

Any information is helpful.  One issue could be the software is somewhat out of date.  When I was trying to bring it up to date one of the updates had a flaw and would not work so I got stuck there.  The only way around that is to do the all at once update and I figured summer when it is real slow here is the time for that.  I have seen a couple guys from the old site try to use their login but it won't work because it no longer exists.  They need to re sign up.