XT600: 5th gear disintegrated, still ok to drive?
 

Hi guys,

A few days ago the 5th gear on my '87 Xt600 2KF started whining. I know now that this seems to be a common problem. The all of a sudden it started making these horrible klonk-sounds, and I'm not quite sure what has happened.

Under normal circumstances I would not consider this but let me explain:

One of my best friends is coming for a visit from Iceland, and I live in Denmark, so I see him rarely. He has got a motorcycle licence but no bike so far. He has been looking very much forward to try my bike when he arrives, but unfortunately I have the problem described above. And now to my question:

Is it ok to use the bike, not using the 5th gear obviously, if I change the oil? What could happen? Destroy oilpump? Gearbox? What else?

Please I need help, my friend is coming in a few hours and will only stay for three days.

greetings, Loftur

Why don't you rent a bike for these 3 days. No risk of damaging your bike and your friend has a good bike to ride on, instead of one with a broken 5th gear.

Thanks jkrijt for the answer.

The thing is, that we are both very poor collage students, and cannot really afford to rent a bike, as it is extremely expensive here. Also, we would only be driving for a few hours this weekend.

greetings, Loftur

If your fith gear has disintegrated you're going to have a lot of lose metal in there which can do all kinds of damage..

Without even knowing the full extent of the problem you could even jam up your gear box while riding leading to massive damage to the bike and especially yourself....

The klonk klonk sound is probably caused by gears with teeth that have broken off.

Those teeth will either:

• Be heavy enough to sit in the bottom of the dry sump and not move - lucky you.
• Be picked up by the oil flow and find a new gear to try to become a part of. If this happens, you will either break another gear (or more)
• or lock the gearbox (and engine) up instantly. That is probably a 600CC grenade going off inside the engine case.

You will also have random swarf in the oil - if you are lucky, the oil filter will catch this before it lodges in the bore or blocks an oilway for the cam.

If you are willing to blow your engine up for a ride with your mate then I would probably do it TBH. I know how important these things are, and you might possibly get away with it.

If you do go for it, plan for getting a bike home that has had a grenade go off in the engine case... That way, you have the worst case planned for.

Good luck.

Jim