First, a little history on motorcycle. 2003 XL1200C. I bought it from a friend in June 2018 with only 5695 miles on it. The motorcycle was very well taken care of...just not ridden very much.I replaced the stock clutch with a Barnett extra plate set up last year just as a preventative measure and everything else in primary looked fine then. It now has 20000 miles and has been problem free until today. Had been out riding backroads for about an hour or so this afternoon without issue. As I went to get on freeway I shifted up through 1st,2nd and 3rd, then when I shifted to 4th there was nothing. At first I thought maybe I broke a belt because there was no sound of metal to metal, etc...just no forward momentum. Bike shifted to 5th okay and I managed to get her home without 4th gear.
Looking at service manual I see 4th gear has a shifter fork all it's own, so I suspect a problem there....maybe a cotter pin broke allowing a pin to fall out of shifter fork ? I honestly don't know. Have had my 1961 Panhead transmission apart a few times, but never been into a Sportster transmission. Will start by removing primary cover and see if I see anything obvious with shifter shaft assembly, etc.
Looking for any advice y'all might want to share with me about how to find and fix the problem. Thanks !
Great news on your 03 is the trans cartridge slips out without taking everything else apart. (2004 and newer require case splitting to service transmission)
Easily rebuildable on the bench, and very robust trans. Follow the service manual, and you should be fine.
Here's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHA9iw6V-Is)something to watch.
Thanks for the link to video. That helps a lot. Was not aware that gearset could come out of case without removing nut on main drive sprocket as that is one of the first things service manual tells me to remove. Should save some time with that alone. Hope problem is simply missing snap ring on detent plate. Taking things apart this morning to see what I can find.
Thanks again !
Never a good thing when you find pieces of the shifter dogs laying in bottom of primary. Time for a rebuild of transmission.
I've broke my fair share of motorcycles, but usually know exactly what I did stupid to break them. This one really makes me wonder what the hell happened to cause this damage. I never heard a sound when fourth gear let go...just didn't have anything there when I shifted out of 3rd.
In the immortal words of Shakespeare,
"$hit Happens".
I'm think some new gears are in my future.Next step is careful disassembly and inspection of everything in gear cluster and all related components.
I've seen worse- new bearings, shift forks, a gear or two ( can't see everything in that pic, but somethings are obvious :) ), inspect the rollers in the MDG, and inspect/replace as necessary the clutch basket/bearing/plates while apart.