Gear shift lever dropped down and some leakage

I’ve noticed this morning there were a few drops of what looked like oil on the ground under the general area of gear shift lever. Had to go to work, so thought I’d inspect it later. Hopped on the bike, went off, next thing I know trying to downshift, and the lever goes waaaay down (like 4 times the normal distance). I can still sort of shift up, and just barely able to shift down with a lot of fuffing about. Thoughts?

If the gear lever bolted on ok?

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Some gear levels can be removed to change their angle, maybe it jumped down if it was loose?

The oil might be unrelated

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I’ll have to check if the lever is still even attached :joy: I’ll be checking that tomorrow. Barely managed to get home. Couldn’t shift up at all. It would only go between neutral and first, and even then with extremely vigorous yanking with hand. So had to putter around in first gear 15 miles :man_facepalming:

The leakage could be a coincidence, I might have not noticed it before. But here’s a pic anyway.

I would clean that area up and tighten bolts and check after a ride. Could be that they have loosened up

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@Panagiotis Thanks, I’ll try that.

The shifter arm came loose and is revolving around the shaft like a carousel. From what I can see the thread is stripped on the pinchbolt and the arm opening it goes into, so I’ll have to replace those :neutral_face: Hopefully, I won’t have to replace the shaft - looks like a long job?

It doesn’t move around if it’s all the way to the inside end of the shaft, but starts moving when it gets closer to the outside edge of the shaft. I wonder if I can fix it in place so I can use it until the replacement parts come in a few days. Maybe wrap a generous amount of tape around the outside part of the shaft or something like that :thinking:

So it’s shafted?

(Sorry)

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The pinchbolt is purely to stop the arm coming off the output shaft.

What I fear is that since it’s loose, over time, the splines on the output shaft or the shift lever at the top have ground away and there’s so little connection between them that the arm isn’t engaging on the shaft.

If I’m right you’d better hope to everything that’s holy that it’s the arm and not the shaft that’s knackered. Take the pinch bolt out, take the arm off the shaft and lets see what state the splines are in.

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Big file sizes incoming.

Position where the arm does not revolve around the shaft.

Position where the arm does revolve around the shaft.

Arm pinchbolt thread.


Shifter arm.




Shaft.





Nut and bolt all the way through …

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Pinch bolt is to also clamp onto shaft tight by closing the gap …

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If you have any heatshrink this forms better around the splines …
Or some thin ie coke tin material …make it longer so there is like a leading funnel onto the shaft and it doesn’t push out of place and then trim …

Oh and …Lube that chain …

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The splines look good. As above if the pinch bolt thread is stripped replace the pinch bolt with a nut and bolt. If you can’t get enough purchase between the splines then put the gear lever in a vice, tighten the pinch bolt or nut and bolt to close the gap and then with two blades in a hacksaw re-cut a wider gap.

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That is certainly how I felt after riding in 1st gear all the way home :sweat_smile:

If I was to use heatshrink on the shaft and then put the shifter arm on, would it be difficult to take the arm off in the future, though? :thinking:

It’s dry lube, so the chain always looks kinda dry. Not a big fan of dry lubes myself, but got it from a friend and don’t want to just throw it away.

Just to confirm, a wider gap between the ridges of the spline? Just wider not deeper?

Currently, a generous amount of gorilla tape seems to work as a very temporary fix.

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Just to be clear your cutting a wider pinch gap to decrease the diameter of the gear changer pinch on the shaft, your not re-cutting the splines.

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Oh, you mean like this? That makes a hell of a lot more sense :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

arm

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