Hmmmm, interesting. It's not going to be clutch related, the clutch is before the transmission, a problem with it affects all gears, with the exception of slippage which generally affects the high gears first, but that's a silent problem. Considering you are *only* having issues in 3rd gear, that pulls the focus off of everything except the transmission itself.

Most likely your third gear set, either on the input or output shaft, maybe both, has had a couple teeth knocked off. Here's the big problem though, each time the gear moves through that area, it's going to free spin and then slam into the first good tooth, possibly cracking it or breaking off more teeth. Those teeth are now free-roaming metal in your crankcase.

They can get into and damage/destroy other gears, even crack your case!

I wouldn't ride it anymore, heck, I wouldn't even start it until you can split that case and figure out what's going on.

Check out this page..... http://www.gadgetjq.com/transmission.htm

Scroll down to BMW 1150GS transmission. Obviously, you don't have a BMW transmission, but pretty much all motorcycle transmissions are extremely similar. I'll bet you that your third gear pair of gears is goobered. On that tranny, it would be the fourth pair of gears from the top.

Si

 

My buddies also rode it and noticed the same thing, so other gear teeth probably broke off into the case if that was the deal. So the parts that broke off I am guessing would be easily visible? Or do you mean the entire engine case they could be scrambled in? Is the transmission located inside it's own housing or just like inside the engine casing? Thanks for the info!

 

I wouldn't say they are easy to find. You have to split the case.

Your engine/transmission combination is split into basically 3 parts; the cylinder, the left side case, and right side case. Everything in the engine/transmission mounts to, or mounts in, those 3 parts. The transmission is in those 2 side cases. Inside the case it is separate from the engine, but they share the same case, they just have separate compartments (because it's a 2 stroke). You have to pull out the engine and completely tear it down. Once you have it torn down, it should be pretty friggin easy to find the shelled parts though.

If your lucky, you haven't torn up the bearing bosses in the case, or the input/output shafts. If it chunks a tooth, and that tooth goes back through the gears, it becomes a question of the easiest way through. Is it easier to flatten out the tooth between the gears and pass it through, simply kick it back out from the pinch, or crack the case to make room between the gears for the tooth to pass.

 

That sounds EXACTLY like what's going on, especially in neutral. Like the gears are turning and chunking a little piece of metal around, sometimes violently like a SLAM noise. It's cool though, a whole new set of gears should do it I assume?

 

Not necessarily. You wont know till you get apart. You might need one, you might need all of them, you might need a new friggin motor. You just won't know till you break it down. IF you need ALL new gears, it would likely be cheaper to pick up a used motor off eBay or something.

Si