Ok so I looked around and couldn't find any answers to my current problem so here's my plea for help. I bought a 954 about a month and a half ago and its been great, I love the bike to death. The only problem with it as far as how she rides is that second gear drops into neutral within 4 or 5 seconds of use. I've been riding by just going from 1st to 3rd and skipping 2nd altogether but i'm tired of doing that and i really want to ride her hard for once. Another important piece of info is that i can downshift into 2nd just fine, and as long as i don't give it any throttle and just let the bike rev down till i downshift to first its great. So i talked to a friend of mine that i have class with who's ridden for 30 years almost and he said that the gear might not be stripped and that it might be a clutch problem? can anybody second that or is there more going on here than i can see?

 

bent shift forks - previous owner was probably wheelie happy

im sure some of the resident mechanical gurus will chime in soon enough

 

yeah the guy did like to do wheelies supposedly. also, estimated fix prices would be welcome also advice on if its worth fixing or if i can just keep riding 1st then skipping to 3rd would be cool.

 

Shift forks, get it fixed, it will only get worse, if you do the work yourself its not too expensive will have to find someone with more experience to help with that though, good luck!

 

ah ok thanks for telling me what the problem was. will the problem spread to other gears or will it just mean that i have no second gear? also, i would like to know how much it would cost (ballpark guessing) for me to get it fixed if i order the parts online and have a person at a motorcycle shop do the work (i don't know many people who ride, and the ones that do ride aren't mechanic guru's either...). Thanks a lot guys for your information

 

It's looking at around $200 or so for parts to DIY. Probably close to $600 or better for a shop.

 

ah junk oh well. I s'pose I'll just have to save up then and hopefully get it fixed within the month. thanks for all of your help guys

 

i cant remember if it will make other gears go out or not, but last i heard about it they said not to ride until it was fixed because it would damage more internal parts of the tranny or something along those lines, keep looking for more opinions on that one though, never been through it myself

 

crap. my bike is my only transportation period. ah well. so...anybody wanna sell me their old bikes for cheap?? haha. I'll just not do anything and live off of expired food till i can get this beast fixed then

*edit* I think instead of trying to fix this thing I'm gonna trade it in with my old bike and see how much off i can get on an '07 or '08 cbr 1000....i love this bike but its ended up turning into a money trap...and i don't wanna get sucked into that hole. hopefully with the two bikes i can get like 2 or 3,000 off of a new bike (since my bike isn't in great shape) if not i dunno i might end up fixing it. Again, thanks a lot for your input guys.

 

dude you can ride your bike with a bent shift fork into second - its a sequential transmission, the other gears shouldn't be effected so just go easy on second and do what youve been doing


weird thing is you are the first 954 owner ive heard of having a shift fork go out - happend alot on older hondas