Gearbox/2nd Gear

Experienced Owners

The following owners have experience in rebuilding the gearbox:

• Justin Lassy
• Paul Streit
• Dave Litton
• Tom Komadowski
• Mike Colicos

Another weak point in the XS/XJ Eleven appears to be 2nd gear. The transmission is generally a bit "notchy", however, 2nd gear is apparently the most prone to failure.

The consensus is that if you find an XS/XJ Eleven at a wrecking yard, chances are good that the gearbox - 2nd gear in particular - has already been scavenged. Furthermore, replacement parts from Yamaha are almost too expensive to make it worth repairing the gearbox (sounds familiar, doesn't it).

So the moral is, if you're looking for an XS/XJ Eleven, give the transmission and 2nd gear in particular a good look and feel. If you own an XS/XJ Eleven, treat the gearbox with care, especially 2nd gear.

A warning to those of you with failing second gears (or other gears for that matter). I am repairing what was thought to be a typical 2nd gear problem for a fellow on an 80 XS-11 standard. Before he brought the machine to me, he said it got to the point where he couldn't shift gears. Well, after I pulled the motor, pulled the oil pan off, pulled many other things off, cracked the cases, this is what I found:
Metal bits everywhere! Let's see:

• 1 shift fork broken into 3 pieces
• 1 trashed shift drum
• 2 teeth from second gear
• trashed main bearings
• trashed crank
• and the dogs on the gear that mates with 2nd aren't healthy either --- they are but little shiny nubs.

Here is my theory on what happened: Guy abuses bike (I don't think that this is really a *common* failure on these machines, I do think its fairly common that people abuse them, however). After many abusive shifts, the grooves on the shift drum become worn, at the same time the dogs on 2nd gear become worn. 2nd gear begins to pop out. Rider tries to pop it back in, woops there goes a tooth, woops there goes another tooth, after all this grinding, breaking, shift fork bending/burning, metal bits are deposited in motor, later main bearings and crank! Then for whatever reason, there goes the shift fork.

Moral of the story: If your machine is popping out of gear, riding it any further will definitely STRONG>not help it, if not lead to more serious, and very expensive failures. This fellow may give up and call it a parts bike, especially in the light of the crank/bearings. A data point and something to think about...

One thing that has worked, that I'd like to share with the poorer XS1100 riders out there, is my Black and Decker 2nd gear fix. After removing the counter shaft with the motor still in the bike (as has been previously described), I tried the following: Using a grinding stone on a drill, I put a new face on the worn dogs on second, cutting back until all the smoothed part was gone. Then with a triangle file, putting pressure mostly at the base, back cut them a bit. Checking the mesh with 5th, I then made sure all 3 dogs contacted together, adjusting with the file. The 5th gear slots were sharpened up by taking a conical grinding bit, and running it a few times at the contact end, from the back relative to 2nd. I cleaned up the scares on the shift fork, hammered it straight, and put it back together. After putting it back together, I have about 1000 miles on it, during which I've hammered the living hell out of 2nd, to see if its going to fail, and as of yet, not a single skip.

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