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False neutral issue

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18K views 60 replies 19 participants last post by  tdh  
#1 ·
Looking for some input to a problem i am having with my 2012 ZX-10R finding a false neutral between 2nd and 3rd gear.

When accelerating WOT in 2nd gear and then using my quickshifter more often than not I find a false neutral. The dash shows that its in 3rd gear but I have no power going through and it will smash the limiter until I kick it up again.

I suspected originally it was a clutch issue so i replaced my stock (which was 100% fine after opening it up) with a kit from DP brakes. I also had a Annatori QS which i replaced with a Translogic QS.

Is my transmission defective in some way?
 
#2 ·
I've actually hit false neutral between a couple of different gear combinations on mine using my quick shifter. I *think* it happens when I am being lazy on the shifter. That is, if I am more deliberate with my shifts it doesn't seem to do it. By more deliberate I mean I make sure my foot isn't touching the shifter before the shift and when I do shift I make sure I move the shift lever fully with good force. My 600s seem to shift a lot better/easier than this 10. I'm also thinking about increasing my cut delays a little more. Mine is a '14 by the way.
 
#4 ·
I *think* it happens when I am being lazy on the shifter. That is, if I am more deliberate with my shifts it doesn't seem to do it. By more deliberate I mean I make sure my foot isn't touching the shifter before the shift and when I do shift I make sure I move the shift lever fully with good force.
I hope its user error and not a mechanical issue! I am being as deliberate as i can be with the shifter, i knew i should have got the gp style sensor....

Is your shift arm and rod at 90 degrees (or as close too) from each other?

Can you post a picture ?
Image
 
#8 ·
Yes it happened with the first one thats why I bought the new Quickshifter because i thought it was the cheap annatori that was causing the issue. I have the Translogic IS4 which apparently is programmed for each bike and takes live readings to calculate the correct cut timing. It can be adjusted with an optional dial but i don't have that. It is incredibly smooth and can shift through any gear even at low revs 3000 for example.
 
#9 ·
I agree with TDH. When the shift feels harsh the kill time is too short. When it doesn't go all the way in there just isn't enough rotation on the arm. At smaller throttle openings it doesn't seem to need as much force to shift. I spent a lot of time getting the rigging right. A pain in the arse with these rods. I do t know why we can't have shift rods with a left hand thread on one end so we can just give it a twirl to adjust it. Get your rigging right and don't be shy to give it a deliberate push. It has solved the problem for me. I didn't miss one shift on my last track day. It happened to me more late in the day when I got lazy on the shifts. If it dies on the shifts for too long and you aren't missing any changes you might be able to shorten the kill times a bit
 
#14 · (Edited)
I hope so Scout.

My tech pulled the transmission back in the shop and after inspecting the shift fork and worn dogs on both 2nd/3rd ring gears, we had them replaced.
Shifts like butter now.
Thanks for this, if i can't sort out my issue with messing with the lever and quickshifter i will have to consider pulling the box apart. Unfortunately i imagine this is pretty costly.

Today emptied out my amsoil that had done less than 3k miles and put in motul 300v suddenly I have softer shift and back down to 13kg on the strain gauge.
And shifting super.
Interesting. I had Amsoil in it last change and now have Motul 7100. The issue persists with both oils for me.
 
#12 ·
I experienced several mis-shifts or false neutrals going from 2nd -> 3rd over the course of 2 race weekends.
I adjusted my shift lever and checked QS settings but still persisted.

My tech pulled the transmission back in the shop and after inspecting the shift fork and worn dogs on both 2nd/3rd ring gears, we had them replaced.
Shifts like butter now.
 
#13 ·
I been having similar issues with my Woolich quickshifter it was a combination of few things, if you run amsoil it shifts nasty and while I was running it I could not set my shifter up I was always playing with timing etc and getting nowhere.
So I reversed the shift to gp style fitted factory pro shift star and spring, and turned a bit of the bolt in the stock footrest to remove the gear lever slop.
The above helped lots and I put up with it for a month or so then thought there has to be something wrong with my box, so started to play with the sensitivity of the strain gauge sensor, and when I reduced its sensitivity suddenly I got decent shifts, cordona claim the average pressure is 10-12kg is what 99% people use I was upto 16kg to get it to shift properly.
Today emptied out my amsoil that had done less than 3k miles and put in motul 300v suddenly I have softer shift and back down to 13kg on the strain gauge.
And shifting super.
 
#16 ·
Fixing tranny issues on a gen 4 is nowhere near the same cost as the previous gens. It's a cassette style so it slides out of the side of the bike. You don't have to tear the whole motor down to access it. It would be much cheaper to fix now before somthing breaks and does real damage.
 
#19 ·
Thanks for your feedback I will play around with my shift lever a bit and make sure i am being as forceful as i can be, if the problem persists i will have to sort out some quotes. I took a look at the service manual and it doesn't look to difficult however i think some things are better left to the professionals.
 
#21 ·
There is issues with the earlier 2011/2012 trans' they even have a superceeding part number for 2nd or 3rd gear. They may even need some shimming as they have some slop in them. Everyone that I know races them so it may be more prone in that atmosphere.
 
#26 ·
You don't want to do that unless you're trading ECUs...

The programming and keys for the QS are tied into the actual ECU... so if you buy just the harness and sensor, it won't work on your bike since your ECU isn't programmed for it. And you cannot buy the QS key through the software at all... so you're stuck.

And then even if you do trade ECUs, if you need to adjust it, the key to adjust the ECU is tied to their account so when you go to make a change either to the QS, LC or ECU parameters, it will wipe out the QS stuff from your ECU since you don't have the key that the kit came with when purchased.

If you buy it used, you're asking for a whole lot of headache. Just a heads up.

-Anthony
 
#27 · (Edited)
I've had an interesting problem with my tranny last year. The more I kept riding (all track miles) the more my shifter felt sloppy. A lot of false neutrals and popping out of gear. Until one track day when it just stopped shifting up period. I was thinking the worst and was prepared to pull the tranny out and have it race-built. When I got the clutch out, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the shift mechanism has come loose from two screws, which held it to the case, coming out. One screw came out completely and the other was almost out. See the pic attached. I had to take the oil sump off to get the bolt that fell out and was happy to see absolutely zero metal shavings or tranny bits it. It was immaculately clean. So even with all this rough operation, the gear box parts are very tough. I put some locktite on the screws, torqued it to spec and have ridden at least a thousand hard miles since with nearly no problems. The only mis-shifts that have happened since were caused by me being lazy to shift firmly. At this point, I see no reason to do anything to the gearbox. I heard some good things about Factory Pro Star and Spring though but they're some expensive pieces. I remember I had these bits on my gixxer 750 and seeing no major difference or improvements so I'm undecided on those. All that being said, if you're going in to check the shift mechanism bracket screws, you're right there to switch out the spring and the star.
 

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#29 ·
I have had issues with my 2015 from day1.
The grarbox sometimes shifts easily and sometimes its hard to shift.
My 3rd to 4th seems to be the worst.
Sometimes it feels like the gearlever is stuck and it kind of goes clonk twice before it goes in gear.
Ive had it jump out a few times where its not quite gone right in.
So today i fitted cordona gp shifter setup which is supposed to be one of the very best.
It slow cuts in and out to save the box and make smooth changes.
I started off with 65 milliseconds and a lowish pressure on the shifter.
Worked superb at slower speeds but first full throttle 3rd to 4th went bang big time.
So much it shifted my rear wheel forward and the chain adjuster bolt dented my swing arm block!
Thought id bust the box.
Reset everything and put maximum 80ms time and maximum pressure on the shifter and its better but i would never trust it 100%.
Kawasaki said to try play with the position of the lever on the splines but personally i think its more to do with the shaft. A friend has his rebuilt twice as the shaft was rough and needed polishing smooth.
 
#30 ·
Well, I broke my 2nd transmission in my GEN4 (2014) in yesterday's race! I had false neutral issues from day one and last year I was at a practice track weekend (no racing) and my transmission started getting bad on shifts from 2nd to 3rd and eventually got to where it wouldn't stay in 3rd and drop back into a false neutral if I was hard on the gas. So I pulled the transmission out and found shift forks and fork grooves in a couple of gears worn beyond limits. I put the parts on order but they went back order. I had a race weekend coming up the next weekend and needed the parts. I found a complete transmission out of a 2012 on Ebay so I bought that and shoved it into the bike and went racing. That transmission held up until yesterday. It did the false neutral thing a couple of times in practice but I decided to race it on Sunday instead of the GEN5 that I raced on Saturday anyway. I only got about 4 laps in before it started popping back out of 3rd gear so bad I had to pull back into the pits. Looks like I'll be pulling it again.

Now, I'm running a Bazzaz quick shifter and on the first one I was thinking my problem may have been with the way I had it set up. I would get the occasional false neutral so I thought if I had reduced the sensitivity on the shifter it might force it into gear harder and prevent the false neutral. The problem seemed initially better but then it all went bad pretty quickly shortly after. I figured the reducing of the sensitivity was the reason the forks and grooves to wear so badly so quickly. Well, I set the sensitivity back up after putting the new (used) transmission in. I didn't have any significant trouble with the new transmission until this weekend where basically exactly the same thing happened as what happened last year.

I probably have around 20,000 miles on this GEN4 now and again, I had false neutral issues on it from day 1 even before putting the quick shifter on it. I have over 10,000 miles on my GEN5 now and have never 1 time had a false neutral on it. I'm told shimming the transmission with the race kit parts is supposed to help with these false neutrals. Can anyone confirm or make any suggestions? I'm thinking at minimum after fixing it this time I will raise the sensitivity even more, and increase the cut times a bit more. Any advice/suggestions from anyone who has had this problem and been able to solve it?
 
#32 ·
Yeah, my GEN5 is completely stock on the QS settings and have not had a single issue with it. I agree, it seems the cut time is a little longer on the GEN5 although I've never actually seen the QS maps so I don't know how long they actually are. Neither the FTECU or the Woolich are able to view/modify that (I don't have a kit ECU). The GEN5 also seems to reduce power right after the shift for a fraction of a second which feels a little weird, but may be the key to getting the smooth shift.
 
#34 ·
I'm on a few groups on facebook and this qs thing is quite the talker. I've spoke with some who said they were faster foot shifting.... I have talked to some that roll race and some at the strip. Maybe some exaggeration idk? Here is a map of foot shifting vs stock gen 5 qs you can clearly see which is faster (to me) you can see they foot shifted 1-2 then 2-6 was qs and foot shifting. The foot shifting instantly gives the power back but the qs feeds it back
 

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#33 ·
I've had the odd missed shift and I'll take the blame for not being deliberate with my shifts. When we inspected the transmission last year there was no abnormal wear. Something doesn't seem right if you've even swapped the entire transmission and blown it as well.
 
#35 ·
Wow! What a perfect picture! That's the very first thing I noticed after riding the bike for the first time and I questioned on here if that wouldn't impact lap times! But, if it means not breaking a transmission then I'll live with it. What do they do, just disconnect the sensor?
 
#36 ·
Something doesn't make sense to me on that graph however. If the X axis is time, I would think the total length of time between the first shift and the last shift would be longer on the stock QS shift graph since it's not applying full power right after the shift. That is, it should take slightly longer to spin the RPMs back up to max before the next shift because of the reduced power. Yet, total time appears to be nearly identical. That could be because of extra delay with the on/off throttle blip to actually allow the foot shift. If that is in fact true, then I would be fine sticking with the stock QS shifts over the foot shift, although I would think an aftermarket QS would reduce that total length of time, although possibly harder on the transmission.
 
#38 ·
The guy that got into my ear on this swears the woolich qs for the gen 4 makes the bike a beast. He was confused because the bike was fast af but just wasn't pulling on other bikes like it should.. he realized the qs was not only NOT speeding him up but was actually slowing him down. He went to foot shifting and started pulling on everyone and when he went with the woolich it was night and day but like you said I hate false neutrals and like my trans... also worth noting I heard guhl is dropping kills to 50 ms which is making the bike a lot faster but at what cost?
 
#39 ·
Are you saying he used the Woolich shifter from the GEN4 on the GEN5? Interesting. Unfortunately I can't use Woolich on my GEN5 for some reason. I initially flashed it with FTECEU, then later bought the Woolich kit with log box and o2 sensor for autotune and the bike would never run right. We could never figure it out (Anthony trying his hardest to help figure it out). The only thing we figured is after flashing with FTECU and then going to Woolich something must have been left out of whack over a stock ECU. So, I had to go back to FTECU. I could go with Bazzaz or some other aftermarket QS though. But again, don't care much for the broken transmissions. :)
 
#41 ·
Yeah I assumed it was woolich this guy switched to but it was ft ecu. I believe it was the gen 4 unit just plugged in? And it makes a difference not sure how but this guy swears by it. Totally hear ya on the trans issue but I figured I'd throw it out there since you do compete/race. If I get anymore info I'll report back. As for me I had wanted guhl because he shortened kills but now I'm like hmmmmmm.. lol