I bought a 1985 fxrt on the cheap with a bad stator. Primary cover was off, all fluids drained, and sat for 6-7 years. Put in the stator, filled it up, new battery, bike fired right up! Awesome. So then I wanted to take it for a ride, and noticed that the shift lever had a TON of play. I thought it was the linkage, so I tightened that up, still has play. It's internal. Anyone have this issue before? Also, I found a used transmission out of an 89 that I can probably score for cheap cheap cheap, but will it work? It looks like it may be different. They are both EVO, so I would think it would mate up, but I'm not sure why the case looks different. Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

Check the shift lever at the transmission, make sure it isn`t loose on the shaft.

But it sounds like you may have a broken shifter pawl spring inside the transmission.

You don`t need to look for another transmission, especially one that you can get cheap, cheap, cheap... Just fix the one on the bike, there is no need to remove the transmission.

Remove the top cover from the transmission and look at the shift pawl on the left side, there is a spring that centers the shift pawl, see if it is broken.

MIKE93SVT did a nice write up on this job recently:

https://www.hdforums.com/forum/evo-c...wl-spring.html