My shifter shaft has been loose for the past ~30,000 miles. The arm is tight to the shaft, but the shaft thru the tranny has a lot of play. The play is not only in the direction of the shifter moving with clearance 9indicating maybe a worn shifter spring), but there's a fair amount of rock in the arm itself (worn bushings?).


I went from occasional missed shifts to the tranny occasionally and momentarily slipping. The slipping was the face driving gear becoming disengaged from its mating gear which caused some major deformation of the shifter forks and a lot of metal trash in the bottom of the pan!


Now I'm going into the tranny and replacing everything but the case.


I suggest you get rid of the shifter shaft slop.

 

Put a new pawl and the ignition kill drum in and go back to banging on it. With the kill drum you don't even worry about the clutch just WFO bang , bang, bang, and watch your time slip go down, down, down.

 

What is "ignition kill drum"?

 

It momentarily kills or interrupts the ignition (motor stops making power) to allow for a full smoother shift without missing a gear. I believe they only have them for the five speed trans...

 

That's really interesting! Ive never heard of it. Do you know where to find or an actual name? Googling didn't come up with anything.

 

Call Baker Drivetrain. I tried to find it in their site but could not, you'll have to call them.... 517-339-3835 Mark......

 

Thanks, I actually was chatting with Don on the website and hes sending info to my email. Looking forward to learning more about this!

 

ignition kills arent exactly recommended for street/daily drivers

basically you remove the neutral switch, and replace it with a normally open (or closed? now i forget) version, and use that switch to trigger a momentary "kill" on your ignition. comes in VERY handy for drag racing (similiar to a sport bike quickshifter), instead of clutch in / let off throttle / upshift / clutch out-throttle on, you can literally pin it wide open and mash through the gears.

usually you wire the ignition kill through a switch (manually activated), so it's not always engaged.

downsides:

wide open shifting is HARD on driveline components (as is drag racing)
you lose your neutral light on the dash
if you forget to shut the switch off, the bike will shut off when you actually click it into neutral.


my roadking isnt much of a daily driver anymore (neither is the roadglide...actually got rid of it and got myself something a little more suited to speed, with the same kind of soul), so running an ignition kill with a pingle electric shifter would kind of be par for the course at this point, but I havent spent too much time on more upgrades recently.

 

Jasper86, I read that you took an early Twinkie gearset to include trap door and installed it into your 1998?

I just ordered the Shift drum kit and shift link from Baker and am considering throwing an Early Twinkie gearset into my 1998 Road Glide.

I also have been missing shifts and having false neutrals way too many times.

I wanted to thank you for sharing your knowledge and posting your comments. I learned a great deal about it.

Kenny Wise

 

Ken, I wrote a post recently noting I had mistakenly mounted the drum bearing block w/ numbers side up after a rebuild, just a suggestion.