How I got rid of (a great deal of) shifting roughness

[Troy McClure]

Since the very first moment I got this bike it pissed me the rough and clunky handling of its gearbox, I recently came up with a solution for that. I disassembled the clutch lever and, using a grinding machine, took about 1 mm of the area marked with ther red line you can see in the picture below. Now the lever has more travel, which leads to a better clutch disengagement. You need to figure out the exact ammount of metal removed, depending on the size of your hands, too much grinding and the lever will rest too far away from the grip to reach it, the sweet spot is about 1.5 mm for me.

I just wanted to share it with you guys.

P.S. Excuse my crappy english.

 

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by Troy McClure

[klx678]

Never apologize for crappy English, odds are your English is better than my use of your language.  Probably true of a lot of others here.

[sorkyah]

there is an adjustment knob on both the clutch perch, and the clutch case that allow for this same mod w/o grinding away at the lever

 

[Troy McClure]

3 hours ago, sorkyah said:

there is an adjustment knob on both the clutch perch, and the clutch case that allow for this same mod w/o grinding away at the lever

 

never seen anything like that in my bike, there is a knob to adjust the free play of the cable, something like this

 

 

Other than that, I don't know. 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Troy McClure

[klx678]

The earlier models may have had adjustable clutch levers, but if the most recent are like the XSR they have the lever he showed in his post.  I got adjustable reach shorter levers for that very reason.  They had it right on the brake, but not on the clutch.   

[geophb]

@Troy McClure

If you seek more disengagement without modification, a tighter clutch cable freeplay will allow clutch to disengage more.  

[sorkyah]

From the Owners manual for the 18 xsr700
lever freeplay is how you adjust the clutch engagement characteristics of your motorcycle

there are two places to adjust, at the lever on the clutch perch, and at the bracket on the right side of the bike, as shown in both figures below

 

[klx678]

Honestly I think you have to give the OP credit for knowing what they were doing.   After all, they had to loosen all those adjustments to take off the lever and then readjust after the modification.  

There has to be a fraction of free play in the lever and he wasn't satisfied with the extent of the trave as it was stock.  He came up with a good way to gain travel while maintaining the proper free play.  I give them credit for the thought process.    If he is happy with the modification and possibly has given others some thought, more power to them.

[Hosleymoto]

The book tells “free play” adjustment. Although that can help the issue it won’t cure it. I also notice the hard engagement from clutch drag and my free play is adjusted properly. It’s the ratio of pull that is the issue. The lever doesn’t pull far enough to fully disengage properly and using the free play adjusters to fix it will tighten the cable and take pressure off the clutch (possibly allowing it to slip in severe cases?) over time with cable stretch it’ll just get worse.  I think taking off some material on the lever or aftermarket levers to get more pull length/ratio is the right idea.