Shifting mechanism acting weird after highway incident.

[milk_bear]

I was riding on the highway two days ago when the bottom of the two screws that affixes the shifting mechanism and the foot peg to the frame fell out. This allowed the whole unit to pivot on the remaining screw, rendering the shift lever useless. I lucked out that 1, I was two miles out from a toll plaza, and two, I was in 5th gear so I could maintain my speed.

When I got to the toll plaza, I found the screw had fallen out, but got stuck in the foot peg springs (super mega lucky). I hand cranked it back in and got to the nearest Allen wrench and cranked those things on.

The problem: Since this happened, my gear shifting mechanism is wonky. First thing, I can no longer run through my gears when stopped. I can pop it into first and then up to neutral, but I can't run it to the other gears, it just won't catch them. When moving it will shift up no problem (I had to drive home). Also when stopped, I have to rock my bike more than the usual frequency to get it into first. Shift down to first, neutral light will go off even though it is still in neutral half the time.

Any ideas what is happening here?

[Alex]

The bike should never have been able to shift past neutral into second when stopped. The "neutral-finder" feature explicitly prevents that. It only allows the bike to get into second after it's rolling above a certain (very low) speed.

This is as good a time as any to make sure that all screws are appropriately tightened (and hopefully loctited), and you can adjust the shift rod to confirm that it has the lever placed both in a comfortable position for your foot position, but also is adjust so it's not putting any undue pressure on upshifts or downshifts when you're not applying any pressure yourself.

[milk_bear]

That makes sense. I was asking my riding friend if you could roll through the gears while stopped, because I thought I remembered being able to do that. So chances are nothing is wrong?

Maybe i over reacted because I decided a day before that incident that I was going to sell it and upgrade

[Alex]

The neutral-finder is a Kawasaki-specific feature that is on most of their bikes. No other manufacturer (to my knowledge) includes something like it, so most bikes you can in fact click up or down through the gears while stopped.