My Bike Won't Shift Very Well
By Jerry Matta
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It all started when I broke my counter shaft, which also took out a few gears,
all my tranny bearings and my right center case. This could have been very expensive, about $500 or so. Luckily my buddy had a lower-end lying around that I bought for $100. A good deal, At least I thought it was. After I switched out all the parts, I notice that every so often my transmission wouldn't shift at high revs. To make matters worse it would also pop out of gear. This is not a good thing when doing doubles at Elsinore. So I took it apart again and I had Jimmy (Lewis) look at it. He found nothing. Everything looked fine. I knew it had to be something, so since it mainly did this between second and third, I bought a new shift fork, and second and third gears for both the main shaft and counter shaft. And $200 later, it actually helped a little, but not really. I just tried to convince my self that did, because I spent so much money. Well, after missing shifts and popping out of gear again, I bought a new shift star and shift shaft. This really did improve my shifting and confidence in my motor, but it didn't 100% fix the problem. However, sometime later at Carlsbad I broke my crankshaft in half. So one long Saturday afternoon as I was putting together the bottom end, I noticed something a little strange. The section on the right center case where the shift fork dowel goes through and butts up against the case was worn out. Very worn out!! At least by .125". This came as a shock because I never even thought about this before and I've been doing this for a while now. As soon as I noticed it, I knew this was the real reason it wouldn't shift and why it shifted before my tranny blew, but not after. You can see clearly in the picture (click on the picture) a bad it is worn out. And this is one thing to think about when buying a used motor. However, since I noticed it after my bottom end was already together, I figured I would fix it next time my motor was apart.
