I bought the bike non-running. My girlfriend picked it up and did the normal stuff you can do to a non running bike like shift it through the gears and kick the tires. And i trust that she did; she has bought and sold her fair share of junky XT’s
But now that i have put a few hundred dollars and a few hundred hours into it and started it up for the first time i can’t seem to find a spot where the bike will shift up from neutral to second. Neither running nor rocking it back and forth. It feels like it’s totally missing. No clicking or catching action in the shift shaft, just shifting into air like trying to shift into that imaginary 6th gear. Gonna try slackening off the clutch cable and see if that does anything but I fear deeper issues.
Any suggestions or tips that I’m missing? I’ve never encountered this before.
Mezo wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:27 am
Does it still feel like there is still a spring return when trying for second?
Mezo.
Yes, the shift lever does seem to have tension and return to its resting place.
The folks at the XT500 forum suggested that the shift shaft pawl may have become unaligned with the shift drum pawl behind the clutch. Gonna have to dig back in i guess.
GeoffD wrote: Mon Aug 03, 2020 8:39 am
Have you tried turning the engine with the kickstarter... then trying again?
I tried with the engine running and while rocking the bike back and forth. Didn’t try rotating the crank by hand. This mystery is on hold until mid month after work slows down.
Got the shifting issue sorted. The pawls had in fact been reassembled misaligned. Don’t know how that happened.
Now I’m a little perplexed by this light ticking noise. I think it’s cam chain noise. I’ve adjusted the tensioner to what i think is correct (I’m working with pieces of manuals) so I don’t know if the cam chain is just stretched or it’s something else. This bike did have a broken rocker arm and the cam bearing was sticking a little, all of which i replaced. Now I’m worried the cam chain also suffered from whatever catastrophe broke the rocker arm initially...
I was told to check for the presence of a rubber dampener on the cam chain tensioner, which i can confirm it does exist, so now that’s out or the question.
Which leads me to wonder about the cam chain or the decomp lever attached to the exhaust inspection cap. Cam chain when tensioned was exactly how you’d expect it to be, but i have heard that cam chain stretch is hard to see.
I think I figured out the problem. Valve lash was all sorts of wacky. I originally set the valves with the engine out of the frame and when I started the bike the first time it rattled. So I checked the valves yesterday and they were incredibly tight; I loosened them. The bike still rattled a lot. Today I checked the valves again and they were incredibly loose, so I reset them again and now the bike sounds like how a bike should sound. Exhaust valve still ticks a little more than I like so I'll check that one more time, but I think the saga is over. No cam chain replacement, no catastrophic failure. Just a beautifully running antique.
