Pawl spring replacement. First sometimes not engaging.

[Grim]

Hi, as title says. I am planning some longer trips and my bike is at 47k miles so thought might as well do some preventative maintenance.  

With the bike I'm neutral I got the selector plate off, marked the two large gears  where they met, and removed circuits and gears to pop out the selector. 

Someone had done this before, I could see. Kindly punching the various bits where they lined up.

Getting it back together was ok, holding the spring out the way to get the gears back down on their shafts was tricky but everything lined up once more.

Cover plate went back on fine, the two pins sticking out of slides on the gearbox shaft were centered and no resistance was met.

 

Now, can you do this wrong? With everything seeming right?  First feels a bit wooden, when it goes it is very positive, with more clunk than before, and the return  spiring action is great now. Bit sometimes I noticed it just heads like a dead stop and won't go into first. Rolling the bike a bit on neutral let's it go on the next try.

 

I may need to bleed my clutch, bit I needed to do that before anyway!

 

Thanks

[audiomick]

7 minutes ago, Grim said:

I may need to bleed my clutch, bit I needed to do that before anyway!

So do that first, and then see how the shifting goes.

 

PS: regarding the question "can you do this wrong?": I'm not a great expert on gearboxes, but as far as I can tell, the short answer is "no".

Of course you can possibly get the gearbox back together wrong, but then nothing works. It sounds like you got yours back together right; it does shift, you said, so it must be right. My impression is, a gearbox can't be "a little bit wrong". It's either right, and shifts, or it's wrong and doesn't work.

Make sure your clutch is working properly, and report back if it still isn't shifting properly. And report back if it gets better with the clutch bled so others can learn from your experience.

Edited May 18 by audiomick

[docc]

The external shift mechanism and "connector rod" should be seen to. Make sure the foot lever is not striking the lower extension of the Frame Side Plate. That would give a "dead feel" trying to get into first.

Once, I did fail to seat one of the cir-clips on one of the two shafts for the toothed gears of the shift plate. Yet, the outcome was that the Neutral Light would not extinguish, rather than difficulty getting into first. Again, this is most likely when the foot lever hits the Frame Side Plate on the downstroke into first gear.

 

[Grim]

Ok thank you both.

I feel like it would either work or be completely wrong. Rather than a little bit.

 

Interesting about he external stuff Docc, at one point, thinking I was being sensible, I put the shift lever connector rod back on with the Allen head on the outside and the nyloc nut on the inside ( because it made more sense to actually be able to tighten it).  Then it really wouldn't go into first as the nut hit the outer face of the selector plate!! Took me a while and a bit of flaked off paint to realise....

Nothing else is hitting, and it does go into first quite satisfyingly when it does, it just sometimes... Doesn't 😂

 

 

[docc]

42 minutes ago, Grim said:

Ok thank you both.

I feel like it would either work or be completely wrong. Rather than a little bit.

 

Interesting about he external stuff Docc, at one point, thinking I was being sensible, I put the shift lever connector rod back on with the Allen head on the outside and the nyloc nut on the inside ( because it made more sense to actually be able to tighten it).  Then it really wouldn't go into first as the nut hit the outer face of the selector plate!! Took me a while and a bit of flaked off paint to realise....

Nothing else is hitting, and it does go into first quite satisfyingly when it does, it just sometimes... Doesn't 😂

 

 

In addition to bleeding the clutch, assess the clutch lever travel. Is there excessive "play" in the lever travel before engagement?

[audiomick]

10 minutes ago, Grim said:

 it just sometimes... doesn't

so make sure the clutch is separating reliably. A dragging clutch can do that.

 

 

EDIT: Bugger, @docc was faster. Again. I hate it when he beats me. 

Edited May 18 by audiomick

[docc]

33 minutes ago, docc said:

In addition to bleeding the clutch, assess the clutch lever travel. Is there excessive "play" in the lever travel before engagement?

I ask because I have rebuilt my clutch master cylinder. Twice. The spring inside can fracture, sometimes into multiple parts . . .

 

 

[Grim]

An update, I bled the clutch, filled up the gearbox oil (a quantity seemed to have fallen on the floor in objection to my mediocre lean angle), and the gearbox is now wonderful and not leaking in the slightest. A first for my ownership.

 

Now now now, don't get excited... I have a new problem.

I am a keen adherent to the adage "correlation is not causation". But, I am also neurotic and an overthinker, and prone to not following my own advice.

Did 300 miles yesterday,  and all was good, except towards the end my usually erratic tachometer suddenly ceased to... tach.

It was dusk, and I was on the motorway going 70mph (yes officer). And I realised I also had no indicators to add to my anxiety.

I instantly thought relay, but then my troubled mind turned to my recent fettling. Was something earthing, wouldn't that blow a fuse.. hmmm.

Bizarrely, and most Italianly, I realised I could get everything working again by shifting down, and making the neutral idiot light come on, then all was well for a few minutes. 

On the overrun this would happen again, the needle jumping absolutely all over the place but mostly at zero.

Same, shift down, shift back up and  the indicators, backlights and idiot lights would work again for a while.

Headlight bulbs and brake light still worked throughout.

Now, I don't believe it, but could my neutral switch wire be doing anything here? It was cleaned and firmed up when I put the gearbox cover back on...or is this just the relay.

Most contacts I could get at on the recent stripdown where put in a nicer, less stressful position, cleaned up and tightened where necessary.

I am going to swap relays over now, it's difficult to tell because with the bike sat in the garage everything works...

 

Edited May 31 by Grim

[Grim]

Another update. 

Not the relay.

It is the wiring to the front left indicator.

I can't quite understand, as if it is shorting somewhere shouldn't it be blowing fuses?

If I wobble it in the right direction I can get it to work, which then puts the tacho back in action too.

Maybe there is an internal break in the wire. Time to start stripping wires in hard to access places😁

[audiomick]

On 5/31/2025 at 4:15 PM, Grim said:

Maybe there is an internal break in the wire.

That seems the likely candidate to me. As you said yourself, if something is shorting out, it would be prone to blow fuses. If there is an intermittent contact somewhere, things will just stop working, and when you wiggle it all to get the contact back, start working again. Until the contact gets lost again.

 

PS: it might be in the wire where there is a stress point, for instance, or a connector that is not sitting properly or going bad due to long-term poor contact.

Edited Monday at 11:23 PM by audiomick

[gstallons]

The most intelligent person i ever met said 95% of all electrical problems will be w/in 6" of an electrical connection . Look there first before you go looking for your "purloined letter".

[Pressureangle]

Given the ... marginal ... state of ground circuitry from Italy, it's entirely possible that you have a wire rubbed through on the framework, with a slight touch introducing voltage into a poor ground, neutralizing the ground path to your tach (and other stuff maybe) 
You can do some testing by comparing voltages- across battery + to ground, battery - to ground, and ground-to-ground across different points. It's not a guarantee that you'll see a differential, but if you do it's a certainty that something needs to be addressed. 

[gstallons]

People do not consider the ground to be an important part of the circuit. 

[audiomick]

15 hours ago, gstallons said:

People do not consider the ground to be an important part of the circuit. 

Funny that, because, being a circuit, everything in it is equally important. Otherwise, the circuit wouldn't be a circuit, but rather maybe a semi-circle or a drag-strip or something. 

Edited 23 hours ago by audiomick