Is this normal when shifting?

[luvda6R]

Ok, I just got an '05 ZXR6 and I'm fairly new to biking, so this may be user error.... however a couple friends with more experience with bikes than I have taken a quick cruise on my bike and agreed that something seems wrong. I wanted to get some more opinions.

Here's what's happening:

First problem: When shifting up I commonly miss gears. I feel like I'm doing everything I can to shift smoothly. Roll off the throttle, pull in the clutch, use the foot with swift and moderate to heavy pressure to shift up, roll back on the throttle as I let out on the clutch. I feel like I'm being reasonably smooth, but it seems that when I hit up on the shifter sometimes it just refuses to go into the next gear. I'm wondering if this may be because I'm breaking in the engine so I'm at lower RPMs than is optimal (or where the bike "wants to be") for clean shifting. Maybe I'm being too light when pushing up on the shifter w/ my foot??


Second problem (and the more aggrevating): When coasting to a stop, say to a stop sign, I want to coast in with the throttle in and at the same time click down through the gears so I will be in 1st as I come to a stop. The key here is that I'm not downshifting through the gears, meaning I'm not letting out on the clutch for every gear as I go down....I'm just keeping the clutch in and trying to click down through the gears to get into first. I'm going at a fairly slow speed (maybe 15-20mph) so there is really no need to down-shift by letting out the clutch at every gear. So, when I do this, the bike will not go down to first. As I'm coasting to the stop I'm clicking down and finally get to a point where it won't click down any more...so at that point I feel as though I'm in 1st. However, when I finally start to go it turns out I wasn't in 1st, but instead in 2nd or 3rd. I've tried to vary the pressure that I use w/ my foot to shift down, from lightly tapping it to practically standing and jumping on it (without breaking or bending it). Even if I'm competely stopped often times pushing down on the shifter will not get it into 1st without some fiddling with the clutch, combined with rolling the bike back and forth...usually it will eventually go into 1st.

So, there's my long description.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? Does this seem right that I can't simply shift down into 1st? Or could the shifter need some adjustment...or is there any truth to the idea that the shifting is going to be thougher at lower RPMs?

All comments appreciated. Thanks.

[quantumVista]

Your veteran friends say it shifts oddly? then hve it checked.

when stopping, pull in the clutch and hit your shifter til it bottoms You'll be in fiorst gear. But you might want to have the gearbox looked at.

[luvda6R]

Originally Posted by quantumVista

when stopping, pull in the clutch and hit your shifter til it bottoms You'll be in fiorst gear. But you might want to have the gearbox looked at.

It definitely does bottom (I'm clicking and tapping and jumping to make sure it is at the bottom)..... but then when I start, turns out it's still in second. It just won't go into first sometimes, no matter what I do.

I need to have it looked at.

[Green Knight]

First of all I would tell you to let out the clutch each down shift. I dont' care how slow you're going, do it anyway. The trany on a bike is different than a car. Its a lot better on the bike to let out the clutch each down shift. Plus if you get in a habbit of it you may end up going too far down when you are going fast enough to do damage to the engine or cause you to loose control. Bikes are ment to be shifted while they are moving. Not when they are stopped. Try that and see if you end up in 1st gear at a stop.

As far as hard to shift up... a lot of new bikes are harder to shift at first. You may want to ask your dealer about it but I've heard lots of people complain about this with any new bike.

[idratherBzx10en]

Make sure the clutch is adjusted properly. If there is too much slack in the cable it would be ahrd to shift up and down.

When down shifting without letting the clutch out from say 4th to 1st while rolling to a stop your tranny would probably hang like you described. If you were in 4th or 5th and going so slow that you would wnat to go down through all of the gears without letting the clutch out then you were in to high of a gear for the speed you were going anyway. Go down one or to gears and just blip the clutch out for a secound then do one or two more shifts.

[windrider18]

One other suggestion: Are you allowing the shift lever to reindex properly? That is, are you allowing the shift lever to go back to its "rest" position after each shift? I had a similar problem on my bike, but the problem was that I let my foot rest on the shift lever a little to much and it prevented the shift lever from catching the next tooth on the gear. Thus when I went to shift up or downshift especially, it wouldn't work. Once I made a little extra effort to lift my foot completely after downshifting, I was OK.

[Kamikaze]

I had this same problem on my '05 zzr. It was because of how low the rpms were when I was shifting. I started downshifting at the beginning of my slowing down, and it downshifts just fine. Try this and it will let me know if yours is doing the same thing. When you're pushing down to go into first, let the clutch out a quarter of an inch. If you hear the shift, then it's just low rpms. My brother had the same problem on his hayabusa when he first got it.

[luvda6R]

I took another ride last night and things where a lot better. I think with the down shifting it's just a matter of needing to let out the clutch on at least every other down shift ( "blip the clutch" as idratherBzx10en put it). In that case I'm in 1st by default when I come to the stop - just was thinking I could coast to the stop a pop down through the gears, but I guess not. with problem with the missing gears when going up, I think doing something like what windrider said helped a lot...ie allowing it to reindex properly... If I let my foot down a little further on each gear and gave it a pop to shift up it seemed to shift up better. In terms of being in too high of a gear for the speed...I would agree, but it's because I'm following the break-in suggestions from Kawi and am not supposed to go over 4K RPM...when I follow those guidelines (though I'm pushing to around 5k now) I'm pretty much in too high a gear all the time, just to keep the RPMs down. I don't have any experience to compare with, so I'm still not sure how much is me and how much is bike...but seems better now.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

[joshshorty12]

make sure u have the clutch pulled in all the way, i used to have the same problem, i really wasnt paying attention to the clutch being pulled in all the way.

[zedx11]

hey dude, look at the date of the post

[jc_denton]

LOL! I thought this thread looked new... it's just so old it's new again.

[superman_006]

He has eather fix that tranny or broke that tranny by now

[Tank]

I did too. I thought it to be an interesting read of his problem then getting solved. Good find!.

[ptzpntbll]

lol oh man thats funny