Sticky gear lever.

I have a standard K7 model.

My gear lever is doing weird things - sometimes, when the engine's hot and the bike's stationary, it will hardly go into neutral.

It usually happens like this - I am approaching a set of lights, engine-breaking & front-breaking all the way down to 1st gear (as one does), come to a stop, right foot down, clutch in, go to pop it up into neutral ... and it feels like the gear lever is stuck fast - it just won't budge. So I sit there in first gear, trying to get it into neutral but it just won't go. Eventually the lights change, off I go in first ... and it pops smoothly up (and down) through the gears as soon as the bike is moving again.

Note that this stickyness doesn't happen every time. Sometimes, it just goes straight up into neutral, no problems. Other times it gets stuck, then I know it's not going to budge.

This started happening a few days ago.

Any ideas?

[jonny.boyd]

Check your clutch adjustment, not only by the clutch lever, but also down Left hand side of bike behind front sprocket cover.

I had the same problem and the adjustment thing by the lever was loose, pal adjusted and tightened it and it was spot on..

Thanks for the advice, I'll check the adjustment.

[fizzwheel]

Check these

Chain Tension
Oil Level
Clutch Adjustment

I had a similar issue with my SV, I'd over filled the oil.

Does it pop into neutral easily enough without the engine running by any chance ?

Any slight over fill with oil can cause the Neutral to be a right PITA to find , does the bike also clunk when you put it into 1st gear ?

[jonny.boyd]

Originally Posted by xXBADGERXx

does the bike also clunk when you put it into 1st gear ?

My bike clunks going into first gear, thought it was normal??

[yorkie_chris]

Yeah a clunk is normal into first gear.
But if clunk is massive and it lurches forward or stalls then you have a problem, should be a "clack" noise that makes the chain jump a bit, but not much more violent than that.

The difficulty you having getting it into first is because there is still force on the dog teeth of the gearbox... this force creates frictional force which makes it impossible to shift.

Clutch dragging is only thing which can create this force. Either through poor adjustment or oil level too high.

Having your oil level too high will cause the bike to be quite savage when you select first gear from Neutral . As Chris stated , it should be a sedate sort of clunk but too much oil can make this quite nasty and unnerving .