As fir the clutch prob. i have a 96 F3 and when i am at a traffic light i am in neutral and then try to down shift into first it wont engage, i have to rool the bike foward aliitle and then it will engage. And then shifting from 1st to 2nd it gets stuck in neutral and i have to shift twice to get into second gear. What could the prob. be? Also i was working on the bike yesterday and left the lights on because i was constantly checking my wiring for my turn signal eliminator. so basically the battery died and i had to jump it and let it run for about 20 min. i went to ride this afternoon after and it was dead again, so i jumped it again and rode around the block a couple times and then let it sit in the drive way for about 45 min. while i ate dinner to charge the battery but when i went out there the bike was off and the battery was dead again! What is going on??? any help please.

Thanks,
Jay

 

Gear box, could be bent selector or worn spring (have you missed gear or anything lately), clutch plates glazed, (wot sort of oil have you been running in it?) (when did you last change the oil?) (have you been popping mono's) Check Clutch cable adjustment, they do stretch.
Honda make the best gearboxes in the business (although Suzuki is catching up) and are not usually prone to problems, the fact that you can pop it into gear once your moving! maybe a change of oil may fix your prob.
Even though you weren't riding your bike at the time, leaving the ignition on, sends a current through the system, and wot happens is, it all gets hot, (they don't have heat fins on your Regulator for nothing) The Altenator is this lovely thing with miles of really thin wire, wound round & round, and when it gets really hot, it sometimes this causes a wire to pop. So your going to have to test both of em .
My money is on the regulator, the one in Honda's are total crap, yours may have been on the way out and this was enough to tip over the edge.
With the amount of people experiencing this type of problem in this forum alone, we should all mount a class action.
Anyway, as they said in the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy "Don't Panic". good luck

 

last night after i posted this i went out and jumped the bike with my girls car and left it jumped and ran both the car and the bike run for about an hour, then i went and rode the bike for an hour and went to start it this morning and it turned right over. also while it was charging i adjusted the clutch cable at the lever and it grabs the gears better but i am still having the prob from nuetral to first and first to second. i bought the bike about 3 wikes ago from a dealership that put new tires on it (rear is cracking and has a slit in it) and changed the oil and all that maintance stuff. I have but around 1200 miles on it since i got it. Does it really need and oil change already? I was talking to some of the guys at my work that ride and there opion is that it might be a tranny prob and not the clutch. So at this point i am not sure what to do! The only gear i have missed is 2nd because it catches in nuetral. and when i down shift from 2nd to first and makes a very loud bang and then if i upshift to 2nd again it makes another bang.

 

First of all never jump your bike with a car. It has way to much power and will fry your bikes electrical system. The whole 1st to 2nd thing is a very common problem with f3's. If you read the old reviews on the bike from when they first come out it was the main thing that pro riders found wrong with it on test runs. My f3 does the same thing. Test your reg and alternator and one of them should be the problem.

 

That not changing out of neutral happens to me every once in a while. All I do is release the clutch and then engage it again to go into first, and that seems to fix it. I think it happens if you switch into neutral in a weird way, like maybe the bike is moving when you switch to neutral.

Well, I am glad to hear that going from first to second is a common problem. It happens to me everyone once in a while.

Also, if I leave my F3 sitting around for over a week, it loses charge. I heard this is because of the rectifier. The way I deal with this is I just hook up a charger to it at all times to keep the battery charged.