SLIPS OUT OF GEAR

On my 82 1000 J it seems like every once in a while the bike slips out of gear and into nuetral.
It only happens once in a while and in either first or second gear.
I saw someplace that the J's had some problems and if so what was done or can be done to fix this?

I'm not an expert on this but am thinking it could be a bent shifting fork in the trans. The only other thing i think it could be would be a worn gear cog. There are cogs on the side of the gears that allows them to engage into other gears, if these are worn it could let them "fall out".

Hopefully someone with some more experience will reply:P

The shift forks on almost ALL Japanese bikes are about 3/16" wide paddles that tend to wear over time. They get flattened and thin. The gears also wear. The result is slipping out of 2nd gear. This problem occurs on many models. You can fix the problem in one of two ways. The first way is to remove the transmission and undercut the gears. There will be no popping out after the undercut. This isn't all that expensive and I have known folks to do the job themselves as it ain't rocket science. The second way to fix the problem is to replace the worn parts which means taking the transmission out. There is also a possibility that the shift detent mechanism spring in the external shift mechanism is weak and allows the shift detent to come out of the shift drum and the drum slides a position. That would be an easy and external fix.

Honestly, fixing a KZ transmission isn't bad. You pull the engine, take off all the engine covers, roll the engine over and split the cases and take off the bottom case. The transmission itself is them quite easy to deal with.

Thanks WG and Harm.

So I guess I'll be waiting until I do the 1075 kit and crankwelding and do it all at once.

I have my eye on another bike (newer) to ride while I get to play with the J .

Don't know how often transmissions for the J come up on eBay but I would buy parts... You need a gasket set because you are forced to pull off all the engine covers and scrape all the gaskets off. You don't need to pull off the head/block... just the case covers when you split the cases. If you are going to weld the crank, you got to split the cases anyway.

Thanks George

Yeah I been slowly collecting another bike's worth of parts when I can get a screaming deal on em so I'm slowly getting there.

The nie part is when the last shop I worked at went out of business, I was able to acrue quite a bit of extras (complete engine gasket sets, oil, filters, etc) for next to nothing.

After discussing the subject with the wife, I'm stuck riding it as is until we get her a new car and myself a new bike, then I'm going to do it all at once.