Hello all, Hope everyone's taking advantage of the lovely warm weather ! I've been getting some miles under my belt on the 600ss and have a question. Is it common to hit false neutrals when changing gear? It appears to be when going through the higher gears. Not always but on the odd occasion. Additionally, this again is my ignorance but looking through my handbook there is no mention of gearbox oil, I assume everything runs in the engine oil? Thanks in advance, G.
Yep.........engine oil is in the gearbox as well. False neutrals can be put down to one of two things.......... 1) Being too casual with the gearchange.......Try putting more effort into the foot; or alter the lever position (down a bit). Or, 2) Wear in the gearbox, which someone else can explain better than me...........but as my bike and others I know of have done in excess of 30K miles without the problem, I guess your problem is No.1. AL
Yep I had quite a few neutrals in my SS Try getting it into neutral when you really do need one they go AWOL then and you can't find the bugger. I used to get mine between 3rd and 4th
Thanks for that, Ducbird, that's where it appears the most, between 3rd and 4th. Al, you are correct also, I think I have become a little casual with my gear changes, I need to be more positive. On a related subject, being my first road bike and new to all this, when changing down through the gears a quick blip on the throttle as I change seems to allow the lower gear to select with a lot less of a 'clunk', is this common to most bikes? Thanks again, G.
Whether it is force of habit or whether it actually helps engage a gear (it used to on non-synchromesh car gearboxes) I tend to blip the throttle when coming down the box.... ....although I doubt if it helps with first gear very much........with the SS first gear and neutral; it always seems best to go into first first and lift up into neutral neutral while the bike is still rolling a little bit. They can be b*ggers to get into neutral once you have stopped.
Gino, completely normal especially coming down from 5th to 4th be firm with it, it needs a good hard prod, if you tickle it you will get false neutrals Another tip if you want to get it into neutral at the traffic lights is to knock it in ( up from first) whilst your coasting, they don't like to go into neutral with the engine running standing stationary
My gear box must be so worn, it goes into neutral no problem when its running, standing still and moving
Hi mate, Agree that the false neutrals are most likely down to a lazy foot. Whilst all the Dukes I've owned have had pretty good gearboxes (far better than my old ZX10 Kwak and BMW twins!), they're not quite up to Suzuki standards for instance. They do need a 'positive' shift, or you'll get the symptoms you describe. They are also sensitive to chain tension in my experience, so if you find that the change is a bit 'stiff' or 'cluncky', the first stop is to make sure you've not got too much slack in the chain. This appears to help with finding neutral too, though I won't pretend to explain why - too tight I can understand due to the tension on the main shaft, but not too slack? It appears to help though. On the whole I've not experienced any issues with finding neutral on my 900ss at standstill, or with the ST4 I used to own. However, I do have much more of a problem with my 600 Monster, despite careful chain tensioning. Rich at Louigi Moto did say that the shimming of the gearbox shafts has a dramatic effect on the smoothness of gearchanges and longevity of the box generally. There is a tolerance as with all of the shims used and it may be that the shims selected in some bikes are at the extremities of the limits when they were thrown together . . .eh, I mean assembled, at the factory. Having had Rich help me rebuild the ST4's engine after it lunched the main bearings, I can tell you that the factory do not always get it right. My crankshaft was over-shimmed by 0.25mm and the engine had never been apart since it was made! Hope this helps.
