Shiftless

 So, last Sunday, coming back from an apple-picking expedition out in
beautiful Mt. Pleasant, Virginia, riding the Street Glide, I shifted
down while approaching a traffic light.  I mean, I shifted WAAYYYY
down.   Like, the shift lever went all the way down to the floorboard,
and I could not get my toe under the shift lever.

Once stopped, I reached down and manually pulled the shift lever back
up.  It "slipped" up into its normal position and stayed there.   Now,
that was wierd.  It was as if it had slipped on the splined shaft that
connects it to the shift linkage rod!

No problems the next few stops, and then, again, the shifter went
through its travel and then some.   Again, I reached down and pulled
it back up by hand.   This was getting worrisome!

Soon, the shifter was ALSO going past its normal operating arc when
shifting UP as well, and I knew that either the shift lever splines
has stripped, or the shift linkage connecting lever's splines had
stripped, or the splines on the rod connecting the two levers had
stripped.

I managed to limp the bike (and the apples) the rest of the way home.
That evening, I disassembled the shift linkage and discovered that all
of the splined components were either stripped or on the verge of
stripping.

I don't know if this was simply a result of 45,000 miles of admittedly
hard riding, or because I removed the heel shifter shortly after the
bike was purchased (well, in all honesty, it removed *itself* on I-95
south on the way to Key West!) and thus transferred *all* the wear
onto the splines of a single shift lever; or not.   Regardless, it
seemed prudent to me to replace all the parts that showed excessive
wear.

I picked those parts up from Groves Winchester Harley-Davidson
yesterday and will be installing them sometime in the next couple of
days.

Then the FLHXI can get back to its normal shifty ways.

 tomorrow@erols.com wrote:


Who else here has had problems with stripped shifter splines on
their Harley, I think I remember Bob Mann and maybe Calgary had
this happen, too?

Nice that the dealer had the parts, but bad that they needed to...

I'd be amazed if my 40k mile FJR needed similar attention soon, or to
be honest, anytime in the next 150 000 miles.

 

I would too.  I don't think the shift linkage on any of my other 50 or
55 bikes has ever given trouble.    I thought I had this squared away,
too, replacing the open, unsealed linkage rod (that failed at that
spherical joint on my Road Glide at 3x,xxx miles in the Redwood forest
in California in 2005) with a stainless steel sealed heim-joint rod on
the Street Glide.  That, at least, still seems to be in perfect, like-
new condition.

 tomorrow@erols.com wrote:

  Check the splines on the arm and shaft at the tranny too ! I did mine a
few months ago , if you decide they need replacing I have a procedure for
that . Don't even have to tear the tranny all the way down , but if you're
not careful with the disassembly you'll need to replace the bearings on the
other end of the main and counter shafts . Replace the return spring while
you're in there ...
--
Snag
Learning keeps
you young !

 On Oct 19, 11:44 am, "tomor...@erols.com"


Egomaniac.