I have a 1987 K75T.
On a ride yesterday, I noticed something about the downshifting... I've been fighting with it a bit in city traffic, I have a habit of downshifting to first early on stops becuase the yamaha I used to ride seemed to do best that way, and this bike does not like that one bit, it rattles and grinds if I go into first above about 10 mph, so I've been trying to downshift later, not clicking into first until I'm only going about 5mph or so or even almost as I come to a stop
And I noticed that the shift lever takes more pressure than I'd expect downshifting this way, especially 4->3. If I make that downshift to accelerate, or to slow in traffic but not stop it seems okay, but if I wait a bit longer as I'm coming to a stop, it's a little hard to disengage from 4th. It slips into 3rd easily. 3->2 is similar but not as bad. 5->4 seems to be okay but I was only in 5th briefly since I wasn't on the highway much. Again, there's no clanking or grinding or diffulty engaging, just a bit of resistance in disengaging.
I remember that hard downshifting is a sign of spline problems, but this bike was lubed about 2500 miles ago with honda moly 60 by someone on this forum that seems to know what they're doing (that may be an understatement, it was buddingGeezer down in AR), and it's about 4-8K over being a multiple of 16K so I don't suspect the misalignment problem. They reported that the splines looked like new. Just want to make sure this isn't a sign of trouble, I have some other jobs to do on the bike this winter (forks and possibly front brakes), but I'd rather not tear into the splines unless it's warranted.
On a ride yesterday, I noticed something about the downshifting... I've been fighting with it a bit in city traffic, I have a habit of downshifting to first early on stops becuase the yamaha I used to ride seemed to do best that way, and this bike does not like that one bit, it rattles and grinds if I go into first above about 10 mph, so I've been trying to downshift later, not clicking into first until I'm only going about 5mph or so or even almost as I come to a stop
And I noticed that the shift lever takes more pressure than I'd expect downshifting this way, especially 4->3. If I make that downshift to accelerate, or to slow in traffic but not stop it seems okay, but if I wait a bit longer as I'm coming to a stop, it's a little hard to disengage from 4th. It slips into 3rd easily. 3->2 is similar but not as bad. 5->4 seems to be okay but I was only in 5th briefly since I wasn't on the highway much. Again, there's no clanking or grinding or diffulty engaging, just a bit of resistance in disengaging.
I remember that hard downshifting is a sign of spline problems, but this bike was lubed about 2500 miles ago with honda moly 60 by someone on this forum that seems to know what they're doing (that may be an understatement, it was buddingGeezer down in AR), and it's about 4-8K over being a multiple of 16K so I don't suspect the misalignment problem. They reported that the splines looked like new. Just want to make sure this isn't a sign of trouble, I have some other jobs to do on the bike this winter (forks and possibly front brakes), but I'd rather not tear into the splines unless it's warranted.