Oldfeller--FSO wrote on 04/25/08 at 03:12:33:These are break in issues that tend to go away by the time 5,000 miles has come and gone. Be gentle and patient with it.
Take care not to get your revs up any while doing these engagement tricks, damage to gear dog edges can take place if whapped into gear at very high rpm.
Oldfeller
I dunno about "break-in issues" since all three of my Savages have most of these different symptoms to different degrees...
But as someone else mentioned: "old school" transmission... and Oldfeller gave the best advice yet with:
"Be gentle and patient with it."
A whole lot of the problems I'm hearing sound like poor shifting technique, and
not having a feel for the transmission... I have learned to compensate for most of these little shifting quirks over the years.
Different bike... different techniques.
The last thing you want to do is get frustrated and go stomping around on the shifter. Best case: you break a shift rod outside the box; worst case you bend a shifting fork inside the transmission; then you have serious and permanent shifting problems which cost a small fortune or whole new education to fix!!!
And yes, as someone mentioned: proper clutch adjustment is important to how the bike shifts. The 99 I just bought had the clutch lever adjusted so close to the bars that the clutch was dragging unless the lever was squeezed tight against the bars. Hint: that's not where/how a clutch cable should be adjusted to engage/disengage.
Other shifting techniques than the much mentioned: "slip the clutch to work it down through the gears" ... Why are you at a stop and it a top gear to begin with?
Didn't you down-shift through the gears any while you were slowing down?? Tsk.. Tsk... You don't really have to use real engine compression decell/braking like a truck going down a mountain, but you can at least snick it through a few gears as you slow down.
Just a tiny bit of clutch action with each shift will make each one engage easier on the way as you slow down. Besides, you should always be in the proper gear to accelerate at any given moment; even while slowing... you may suddenly find yourself in a situation where you need to accelerate, and that's not going to happen if you are at 20mph and still in 4th or 5th gear. You should be down to second by that point, and ready to drop into first just as the bike rolls to a stop.
Oops... who slipped this soap box under me??
Sorry about that... carry on...
I could not agree more. I learned really quickly that my bike does not like to be downshifted through all 5 gears while sitting at a dead stop. I try to match my gear to my speed at all times - going up and coming down - and that seems to work really well and keeps me from getting 'stuck' in a gear. also a little double clutch action has always gotten me out of those jams when it just doesn't want to go into gear.
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