After being away the last week and a half I've been enjoying the new tires and she's been running smooth and steady. No issues whatsoever. Transmission has been as clunky in 1st yet precise through the gears as ever since i've owned the bike. No clutch issues whatsoever. Brilliant.

Last night I parked the bike outside instead of in the garage like I always do. Of course it ended up raining pretty good during the night but I had the cover on so I didn't think twice about anything when I took it off and started her up to go for a ride late afternoon today. Got about 1/2 mile away and realized she wouldn't shift into anything higher than 2nd so I turned around and came back home but haven't had a chance to take anything apart.
The symptoms so far:

From the outside everything looks good, nothing is leaking.
Clutch lever moves normally and reservoir is full/normal.
Gearshift seems harder to move and clunkier than normal between N and 1, and it's tougher to go into 2 then normal (although it will still shift between those gears).

Any thoughts/ideas/experience with this before? And how could it happen so suddenly?

amac

 

Well to me it sounds light a weak spring. I believe there are two located in your clutch housing. See if one of them is broken.

Give that a try and hope that is all it is.

 

It seemed to me that it might not be a coincidence this happened right after leaving the bike outside during a rainstorm when it practically never sees the wet. Since everything else seemed okay this morning i took the gear shift apart, lubricated it and anything else I could see that moved and reassembled. Seemed better so I went for a short ride and, after a couple odd feeling shifts everything was back to normal.

Wonder if maybe it was just moisture getting into the assembly somewhere?? OR if something is starting to go (shift fork, clutch, spring, etc). I'll update if anything else happens.

amac

 

Glad everything is ok.
How long has it been since you serviced that area?
Some rain should never hurt your bike EVER!

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13500879/1-gear%20lever.jpg

 

Your link is no good it said page moved or doesn't exist.

 

+1

 

Should be fixed now.
Sorry for inconvenience.

 

Thanks, Naga- that post is the one that made me wonder if it might just need some cleaning in there, but I didn't notice any crud. Actually that shifter bolt fell out on me last fall on the highway so I had just replaced it and gone through all those fittings not too long ago!

 

Watch this video, it may explain some things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2CybLSrN5Q