Hey guys, recently I bought a 1991 sportster 883. The transmission was doing some funky stuff. Very hard to shift and hitting like a false neutral In between gears. So I decided I was going to remove the tranny and figure out what's going on. Fast forward, now I have the transmission out. It's still put together with shift drum and forks still connect. My question is, should the shift drum be hard to turn by hand? Before I start taking the forks off I wanted to ask this. For the life of me I cannot turn the shift drum by hand and I just assume it should be easy to torn. The forks look like they want to move but are getting hung up on something. The only way I can get it to shift is if I jam a screwdriver in between the prongs on the drum edge and really force them. This just seems excessive to me. My guess is the pins in the forks are getting hung up on something in the grooves of the shift drum. Just curious if anybody has ever tried to spin one by hand. It should be very easy correct?

 

You have to spin the main shaft while attempting a bench shift.

 

Thanks Mark! And if it's still doesn't wanna shift by hand? Something must be wrong?

 

That would be a fair assumption.