I'm here to ask for your help again. I have an '88 Sporty, 883 --> 1200. Mileage and history unknown.

Recently, I started to notice it was popping out of first gear when starting from a stop. Sometimes it would go back to first. Other times, it would stay in a kind of in-between state in that I could hear/feel something rubbing but no power was going to the wheel. A couple times, it even jumped from first to second by itself. I'm pretty confident I had the clutch and primary adjusted correctly. I was doing firm (not soft) shifting.

After reading much about the drives dogs wearing on the first counter shaft gear, I thought that might be the problem. So I pulled the tranny to take a look.

I checked the first and third counter shaft gears. As you can see int he photos below, there is a little wear on third where the dog enters but it doesn't look sever to me. The first counter gear dogs look pretty good too. Maybe a little bit of sharp edges but I don't see excessive wear. This is my first time at a sporty tranny so I am looking for your opinion in support of or against my assessment. Do you think they need to be replaced?

The parts I did find suspect were the shifter fork and the shifter fork roller (see photo). Unfortunately, I did not note the position of the worn parts prior to disassembling. One fork looks worn more than the other. It is worn on both sides. I don't have a way to accurately measure the difference in thickness and I know it is difficult to tell from the photos. There is a little ridge on both sides and the difference is probably the thickness of my thumbnail on both sides of the fork. Also, the roller shown has the collar part worn off as shown. I don't know if that roller was on the worn fork or not. Once again, I am looking for help determining if these are worn too far and if they might be the cause of my symptoms?

Additional information.

• The shift shaft had a lot of chain wear indicating a loose primary chain at one time I suppose.
• One of the 4 bolts holding the trap door in place was broken and the threads in the case are damaged. The bolt was sitting in the hole loosely.
• The nut holding the the drive sprocket on the tranny output shaft was on finger tight.
• One of the bolts holding the stator in place was broken off.
• The other side of the shift fork has a letter "C" that I think means standard thickness.

 

I just wanted to give an update here. I have decided that one primary problem with is that the shift fork finger roller lost it's collar and fell of the finger causing sloppy shifting. I have decided to replace the roller and put it back together to see what happens. Total cost is $5.00 for the roller and about $7.00 for the primary cover gasket. I also had to buy a 5/16-18 helicoil kit for about $22.00 and a snap ring pliers for about $14.00. Oh, I also need to buy new stator bolts.

I suspect a contributing factor that may have caused the roller to fail is that one of the bolts holding the trap door on was not engaged. For some reason, the bolt in the failed bolt hole was shorter than the other three. It looks like the threads toward the front of the bolt hole are sheared off while the rear threads are still intact. Maybe some jackass lost the right bolt and put in a shorter one

I think another factor could be that the nut holding the drive sprocket on the the tranny shaft was loose. I am going to fix all three of those problems and put it all back together tomorrow. I will provide an update after testing.

 

Great Success!

I always like to post a follow up, in case someone has a similar problems in the future. I wish more people would.

I just got everything buttoned up and went for a short test ride around the block. I am pleased to report that the tranny and clutch worked perfect. That little bit of clutch drag that I was never able to adjust out was gone and the tranny shifted through all the gears smoothly and solidly. I also found that a whining noise from the primary I had grown used to was gone.

Total cost was
$6.00 - primary cover gasket
$5.00 - shift fork finger roller
$8.00 - new stator bolts
$4.00 - new clutch cable adjuster boot (needed one any way)
$11.00 - New throw out bearing (not sure I needed it but I'm glad I put it in)
$34.00 - Total

Before I started on this, I was reluctant to start this job. It did turn out to be a lot of work, but, it was inexpensive and the time was well spent.

To recap. I think my primary problem was that the collar had worn off the shift fork finger roller. This may have been caused by a previous owner/mechanic shearing off the threads inside the upper right trap door bold hole and leaving the drive sprocket nut loose.

On a side note. When I removed the 4 bolts holding the trap door on, I saw that one was shorter than the other three. The short one was the one in the stripped out hole. I thought that was a contributing factor until I saw the note in the manual saying that the shorter bolt must go in the upper right hole. It seems strange to me because it looks like the upper right will have the most stress and seems most critical. I assume that hole had to me more shallow because of something behind it taking up space.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that everything was OK because I didn't want to go into the tranny. I was now that I had jumped in there in the beginning.

 

Wow, great work on fixing it yourself. I've had a couple strange hiccups with 3rd gear on my 1991, but it seems to have gone a way recently.

I may have to pick your brain sometime, so thanks for the updates and information.

John