Dremel fix...What to look for

[natemoen]

Glad it looks good in there!

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Steve,

Glad to hear it looked crisp in there, I was going to ask if you knew how many miles were on it??

I have to disagree with your assumption of the gear malady occurring from poor shifting technique or abuse. We had a poll a few years ago, and a fair number of folks reported bikes with tranny problems, and I'm sure plenty of them were original owners that didn't abuse their bikes, and knew how to shift properly, using the clutch, etc.!

I'm essentially the only owner of my bike, aside from the 1st 17 miles that the PO did for it's 1st 2 years while in Japan sitting in the back yard on the Naval Base. I rode my bike for 9 years and some calculated 50K miles before the gear problem appeared. I say calculated, because my odometer stopped at 978 miles, but the tripometer worked, and so I just used that for monitoring fuel requirements.

I didn't abuse the bike. I did ride it with vigor, rarely speed shifting from 1st to 2nd, but otherwise always used the clutch. I had been riding bikes for some 8 years prior to acquiring my 11, so I had learned how to shift properly to put the least amount of stress on the gears during the shifting process.

My first gear actually went out first, skipping under strong throttle action, so I started babying it, and shifting into 2nd sooner, but it started to skip about a month later! Every owner knows about the Neutral to 1st gear CLUNK that occurs when stopped and preparing to start out. This is due to the gears spinning when the clutch is not being held in, and they don't slow down that much even when it's pulled in, and then shifting into gear throws a moving gear into a stationary one...you get wear and tear WITHOUT intentional abuse. It's even been suggested to kill the engine, downshift to 1st, then restart before taking off to prevent this type of wear. A bit extreme for sure, but due to less than perfect engineering design, this type of "normal" wear occurs from regular use, and the heavy amount of power that the engine delivers. And the square cut dogs/slots lends to slippage with fairly small amounts of wear/rounding of the contact surfaces.

Finally, Marty, I can appreciate your point of view, but you being a "JET" Mechanic...you can't afford to 'play' with parts in a jet engine, if it's suspect, it gets replaced with a new one, with the bottomless checkbook of the US gov't/military or national airline footing the bill to ensure a midair disaster doesn't happen!

But us poor common folk don't have that luxury, not to mention that the parts will soon probably be NOS, and they are quite expensive now as it is at $50-$100 a gear! So... yes, replacement with NEW parts is the IDEAL situation and fix, and moving the washer can help improve engagement, but they will still develop wear and tear, and with enough miles, will eventually skip. The Dremmel fix is a definitive cost effective solution for many folks, and I've not heard of anyone reporting any dogs shearing off from the grinding process/weakening. Just my 4 cents!

T.C.

[crazy steve]

Hey Steve,

Glad to hear it looked crisp in there, I was going to ask if you knew how many miles were on it??

I have to disagree with your assumption of the gear malady occurring from poor shifting technique or abuse. We had a poll a few years ago, and a fair number of folks reported bikes with tranny problems, and I'm sure plenty of them were original owners that didn't abuse their bikes, and knew how to shift properly, using the clutch, etc.! T.C.

The miles are totally unknown, as the motor wasn't original to the frame it was in; the guy I got the bike from got it somewhere. But I suspect low miles as it's very clean inside. If you made me guess, I'd say this was pulled out of a wrecked bike, then stored inside for years. I suspect a wreck in it's past because when I cleaned up the oil pan and filter housing, I found several chunks of gravel wedged between the fins on the filter, the filter housing is cracked, and the pan was gouged up pretty good. I'm replacing both with the bits off the other SG motor.

I'll stand by my abuse/sloppy shifting theory because I learned very early that failing to shift firmly could cause skipping. This happened to me occasionally on my '78 within the first few thousand miles of new until I learned to SHIFT that trans, also being careful to rpm match as close as I could. Once I did that, the skipping and popping out of gear disappeared. I really think that technique with these is everything. If that's not the case, then I'd have to say that quality control on the trans/gears must be to blame, because there's lots of owners that have never had that problem.

I'm not out of the woods yet; I've still got to do the motor for the '78 modder bike, so we'll see if I can be lucky twice...

[DGXSER]

I think the issue is wether or not you baby the bike or use it as designed.

I know a local XSive who has over 80k on his SG that he bought right from the showroom floor. He has never had the shifting problem, and he rides the bike as a cruiser.

When I got my first SH, it had 23k miles on it. That was in 2008, so a very lightly used bike. And by all appearances a well cared for and kept up machine. It did not show any signs of the gear slippage during the test ride. But I pretty much babied it during the test ride, I am not gonna risk hurting some one else bike, or wrecking it. I did hit the throttle hard, but still shifted prior to 5k during the test ride. After putting a few miles on, I got the feel of it and took it up to 7k for shifting a few times. THEN I found the slipping.

Now, if I never rode it like that, which I consider to be the designed use of the bike, it may not have shown for many miles, if ever. It is hard to say really. I took the engine apart and found what I posted earlier.

But obviously Yamaha acknowledged they had a design flaw because the new gears you buy have the backcut put in them. It obviously cost them some time and maybe tooling which all equal money to make that backcut into those gears, so they would not have done it just because they look cooler like that. I know that I put alot of miles on the CB750s I owned and never ever had a skipping problem. And I guarantee you I almost never used the clutch unless I was shifting into or out of first gear. That was how I was taught to ride a motrocycle, and it is also condoned by the MSF instructors. But they are also not familiar with the XS11 though.

[crazy steve]

I think the issue is whether or not you baby the bike or use it as designed.... And I guarantee you I almost never used the clutch unless I was shifting into or out of first gear. That was how I was taught to ride a motorcycle, and it is also condoned by the MSF instructors. But they are also not familiar with the XS11 though.

Oh, don't get the idea I 'babied' mine ... while I didn't beat on it every time I rode it, when I wanted to go, the bike was expected to deliver. But I found that shifting technique was critical to how it worked and definitely required attention when thumping on the bike.

I'll agree that this was somewhat of a design flaw, and compared to other bikes of the day the XS needed much more attention given when shifting and was much less tolerant of practices that other bikes didn't even notice. I also tried shifting without the clutch at first (which with most bikes was no issue) but the XS never sounded 'happy' doing it so I quit doing that quickly. So if you treated the XS gearbox like the 'others', it would skip and pop out of gear even when new (at least mine did). Do that enough times, and now you're doing the dremel fix.

Yamahas' improved gear set (or the dremel fix) made technique pretty much a non-issue... but I still say that a good gearbox and the right shifting technique can also prevent the need to do it.

[benxs1100]

Not some what of a design flaw. It is a design flaw. As you said you could ride any other bike without a problem but it is not that the XS is picky or needs special practices. It is that there was a design flaw. You should not have to baby a transmission and anything that goes bad that easy there is something more wrong than the driver.
Yamaha corrected the cuts in the new gears thus eliminating the problem. If it aint broke don't fix it right? Apparently Yamaha thought it was broke. Like DGXSER said they didn't just make new ones to look cool. I would find it hard to believe that so many people had to do the fix just because of improper shifting technique.

[crazy steve]

You're missing the point; I'm not saying that this isn't a problem, because it obviously is. Yamaha badly miscalculated the 'abuse' factor in the original design, finally realized it, and corrected it with the new gears. If you read and followed the shifting instructions in the owners manual this would never be a problem, but few people did and that's why you see this.

I'm merely saying that if you treat the gearbox correctly, you won't have a problem.

[DGXSER]

Steve,

We all get your point, it just seems YOUR missing or just refusing to see the alternate point.

If you read and followed the shifting instructions in the owners manual this would never be a problem, but few people did and that's why you see this. I'm merely saying that if you treat the gearbox correctly, you won't have a problem.

This is completely and entirely conjecture and opinion. And it is misleading and a huge assumption to suggest that ALL of the people who have had this problem, did not due the above. Not to mention that saying who did or did not "treat the gearbox correctly" is again a VERY subjective thing.

You just seem to want to make it a point that ALL who have had the issue abused or misused their trannies. We get and understand that in your case, you have not had the issue, it is documented that some do not. But it is also documented that the greater majority do. And certainly some of them probably were abused badly, Banshee most certainly was a very abused machine before I got it. But to say that in ALL cases this is true, again, is a a huge assumption, and to state it as fact is misleading at best.

[crazy steve]

...You just seem to want to make it a point that ALL who have had the issue abused or misused their trannies. We get and understand that in your case, you have not had the issue, it is documented that some do not. But it is also documented that the greater majority do. And certainly some of them probably were abused badly, Banshee most certainly was a very abused machine before I got it. But to say that in ALL cases this is true, again, is a a huge assumption, and to state it as fact is misleading at best.

Let's not get too excited...

First, let's admit that the vast majority of current owners came by their bikes second hand. So who knows how it was treated before you got it? What the POs shifting technique was? You're doing everything right, but the damage is already done and with a bit more wear the problem appears. Not your fault by any means.

What I do know is that when I drove mine off the dealer lot, that my shifting habits that I had from my XS2 did not work with the XS11. Right from the start, if I didn't shift it firmly and cleanly, it would stutter or pop out of gear. Took me a few miles, but I learned. I actually went back to the dealer and asked about this, and was told (one of the few times they knew what they were talking about) that you couldn't be 'sloppy' (their words, not mine) when shifting. Never had any problems after that. As has been mentioned, there's more that a few of these that haven't had any gearbox issues, even with high miles. So what's the difference between one with the problem, and one without? It can only be two things; how it was used, or how it was made. It may be the latter, but Yamaha always seemed to have pretty good quality control. Granted, the design doesn't suffer mistreatment well but this isn't the first time a manufacturer has released a perfectly good design but owners insisted on treating it in ways they didn't think of and problems showed up. Own any sort of British vehicle if you want a lesson in this..

The only way you could get a feel for this would be to poll original owners and see how many of those have had this problem. Is it more of a year-specific problem? Maybe tooling that was worn a bit too much, so if you got one that was built with newer tooling it's better? Lots of variables...

But at this point, the number of original owners are so small that it probably wouldn't tell you much.

So I wasn't trying to say that if you've had tranny problems it's because you're some sort of ham-footed knucklehead, simply if you do have a known good gearbox (and those may be extremely rare these days), if you treat it right you can avoid doing 'the fix'.

[crazy steve]

At the risk of beating this to death, I'll spell out what I found when shifting the XS11.

On my XS2 650 when shifting, when moving the lever you could 'feel' the gear change as you moved the lever (and sometimes hear it). As soon as it shifted, you could let out the clutch and apply power. You didn't always have to move the lever it's full travel to accomplish a shift, and the bike didn't care. It was rare to have a missed shift. For most bikes, this works fine.

When I first got the XS11, I discovered that method didn't always work. Shifting like that would mean occasional stuttering and popping out of gear, even if if it 'felt' like it had changed gears. It had, but you didn't always get full engagement. After I started making sure that I fully stroked the lever each time I shifted, the problem went away. You don't have to hammer the lever, but you do have to make sure of the follow-through. Now, maybe mine had poorer than usual machining which is why this showed up right out of the gate; if you had a bike that was 'better', it wouldn't pop out but was still not fully engaging. Over time, this would accelerate wear and get to the point that no matter how you shifted, it would pop out of gear.

Is that a design flaw? I guess it depends on how you look at it; I see it as simply needing a different technique. Interestingly enough, my Sportster is the same way; fail to fully stroke the lever and you can have missed shifts or popping out of gear. Now, it doesn't seem to hurt that trans, as gearbox trouble is pretty rare on those. But you do need to shift firmly to get clean shifts each time. The shift 'feel' is pretty much the same...