Upshifting and downshifting rough....

I've been noticing recently that after riding my '84 R65 for 10-15 minutes that it begins to be more of an effort to shift, particularly going from 1st into 2nd, and 3nd into 3rd gear. When I pull in the clutch and pull up on the shift lever with my toe, it sometimes feels as if the lever won't budge at all, but if I relax my toe and then pull back up again, it will go into 2nd with a noticable "clunk". Same for 3rd gear. However, if I shift sooner than at about 3k (like around 2k), it will often go into gear without much effort. But then the engine lugs.

In addition, I have also noticed that at times when I downshift from 5th into 4th, or 4th into 3rd that at times as soon as I push the lever downward with my foot and it "clunks" into gear, the engine revs go up, as if I have already let out the clutch, even though I hadn't yet. I thought perhaps the adjustment screw at the clutch lever had gotten out of adjustment, but tightening it up didn't seem to have much effect on the upshifting and downshifting. The bike currently has a little over 118k miles and runs OK other than the shifting. Any ideas and recommendations to get things back to normal? I should add that I am not mechanically inclined to be able to go inside and begin tinkering around, and would rather have someone more qualified than me to make any needed adjustments. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks! John

You may need an input spline lube. How long since you've had that done?

Dave,

Well, The gentleman I bought the bike from last June said he had lubed the splines, but didn't say when. He did all of the maintenance work on the bike himself, and had owned it since 1994 when he bought it from the original owner at 59k miles. It had 108k on it when I bought it from him. How often are you supposed to lube them, anyway? Is that most likely the problem?

It could be. Shifting like that is an indicator that something is amiss on the input spline on Kbikes and airheads.

How often depends on what they use for lube, IMHO. I like the Honda Moly60 stuff since it seems to hang in there forever. The BMW #10 stuff seems to evaporate and disappear out of the bell housing before you even have the thing back together.

So, it depends. I think the recommendation is yearly or something, though it's been a long time since I've worked on an airhead.

Interesting. I sure wish I could find out more about just where the "splines" are on my bike and how they relate to shifting. OK, one more question, Dave, and then I promise to not bug you anymore. Is this typically a very expensive procedure to have done by the dealership? I realize you're out there on the west coast and I'm in the east, so that may well be a factor. I know the local BMW dealership where I have my R65 serviced charges $67 per hour for labor. I want to get her back to shifting like she should, so I'm willing to pay for the work if that's what it takes. I'm just curious as to how much is involved. Thanks again! John

There is lots of how to info on the airheads forum.The job is time consuming but does not require a lot of mechanical expertise or special tools.
I have no hesitation to set my valves,but I did not tackle the spline lube job;I had my dealer do it in conjunction with some other fine tuning jobs.It is a piece of routine maintenance(I dont think it needs to be done annually).It may be the cause of your rough shifting,it may not...I would not delay investigating that.If the splines are that dry they will not improve and neglect will lead to a much more costly repair!!

No doubt someone will post the URL for the tech sites for airheads...

Look at ibmwr.org.

Iasked a similar question, along with several others a couple of months ago and here are the responses I got:


http://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2474


Good luck,

Peter.

Thanks for shooting me that thread, Peter! Really appreciate it!