2nd gear shifting issues

well, my 2nd gear shifting issue is starting to get worse.

at first, at the begining of the season it would occasionally jump from 2nd to neutral. wasn't consistant, so i chalked it up to a retarded left foot.

today, i was ripe with problems. when going to second gear from first, it would enguage 2nd then under power, shift to 3rd. i tried shifting very hard, shifting gently, clutch, no clutch, all the same end result. it is a crapshoot whether get a nuetral or it jumps to 3rd.

anyone have this issue before? bike has a fresh amsoil synthetic oil change, and i am very good with chain maintenance. bike has just a tick over 15k.

I have not had that exact issue, but I have had an issue where if I am at very high revs in 2nd I have a very hard time getting it to shift into 3rd (3k miles). At the advice of this forum I changed the oil but haven't had a chance to really test it. I only really experienced this problem when riding offroad... all the places I have ridden since the oil change were more 1st/2nd gear type rides (at least for me with stock gearing). BTW, I have never ridden a bike before where it was so easy to find neutral, usually when I don't want to. However, the inadvertent shift to N can always be chalked up to rider error.

rodney wrote:

well, my 2nd gear shifting issue is starting to get worse.

at first, at the begining of the season it would occasionally jump from 2nd to neutral. wasn't consistant, so i chalked it up to a retarded left foot.

today, i was ripe with problems. when going to second gear from first, it would enguage 2nd then under power, shift to 3rd. i tried shifting very hard, shifting gently, clutch, no clutch, all the same end result. it is a crapshoot whether get a nuetral or it jumps to 3rd.

anyone have this issue before? bike has a fresh amsoil synthetic oil change, and i am very good with chain maintenance. bike has just a tick over 15k.

I raced my wr250 are this last summer. It did start having some shifting issues, first off would hit nuetral when asking for first, most time under hard climbs when you really dont want nuetral. Then it accured a dubble bump shift , I am going to tear it down and see what went wrong. I plan on racing it one more year and am going to install the big bore kit.

I was haing an issue at the track recently where i'd shift from 2nd to 3rd and it would shift back down to 2nd on it's own. This is under hard acceleration though, and it seemed if I made a concious effort to really slam it into the next gear it would stay. A casual shift like normal would not always guaruntee a solid shift.

I am still having my issues with going from 2nd to 3rd as well at high RPMs. However, I can't rule out operator error... just don't know what I might be doing. Basically under hard accleration going through the gears when going from 2nd to 3rd I let out the clutch and its still in 2nd. It doesn't feel like it is shifting back down, just feels like it never went into 3rd. I only notice this on dirt. I tried to re-create the issue on the street and couldn't which is why I think it is something that I am doing. I need to put my boots on and ride the street to see if there is something maybe catching the shifter with my boot or something.

Bumping this back up. My bike only has 300miles on it and yesterday and this morning I've been having issues shifting from 2nd to 3rd. Its not every shift its more or less random. You try and bump it up to 3rd but can feel it just come back down into second. Try again and bingo its in. Since it is such a new bike should I just leave it for a while and see if it goes away on its own? Or head to the dealership asap for warranty? What do you guys think?

I guess I should mention I installed some axle block sliders last week and had to adjust the chain. But I'm pretty sure its in the slack range in the manual. Plus I rode it a few days without this issue since then....Could chain slack cause this?

Relating to the original post about jumping from 2nd to neutral: there was a high volume of riders having this problem on older model (then new) Goldwings. The riders were able to trace the problem to bent shifting forks in the transmission. The manufacturer never formally acknowledged the issue so most of the owners were forced to rebuild/replace the defective part out of their own pocket to fix the problem.

I'm not sayin' that this is the issue with your bike. I'm just relating information that may be relevant. Hope this helps in diagnosis...

Regarding the problem with shifting from 2nd to 3rd, I've found it necessary to adjust my shift lever linkage to accomodate my size 13 foot as well as the type of boot I'm wearing. When I wear a heavier outdoor style boot, everything is fine, but when I were a lighter weight boot for riding to work, I have trouble moving the shift lever cleanly into a new gear position. I have to be much more careful to "move" the shift lever with authority to actually complete some shifts. I have hit neutral more than a few times while leaving a stop light. Makes me feel like a noob to rev the engine in the middle of the intersection: Doh!

Hmm ya it's still doing it. And I cant really replicate whats causing it. It just wont go into third so I let clutch out..still in second.. put clutch back in and it goes to third. Its not every shift. I guess I'll call the dealer and see what they have to say about warranty.