• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

How are those rock hard Rotax transmissions doing?

rride

rride

Husqvarna
A Class
I don't think anything was done to the transmissions, especially for what they are selling for, but I was curious what everyone is experiencing on gear shifting? 1st, 2nd, and 4th gears have always been problems (going into and popping out of gears) only truly solved by back cutting the (at least 1st, 2nd, and 4th) gears on Rotax gearbox (a machining cost cutting savings from the 1992 introduction never improved - until today??).

Aprilia's box was award winning. I'm sure Husky's are rock steady. Hell, even my Honda Nighthawk 750 has a solid transmission, ha ha. This is an Achilles heal I was hoping that would have been addressed since it's a bitch to split the engine case to fix one correctly from the start. And even ATV Rotax Bombardier 650 (single cylinder World Record holder) drag racers never needed to address a transmission after back-cutting gears.

You can finesse it for a long time, but eventually you will incrementally grind away at your gear internals depending on how hard you drive it. But it will last for well over 50K miles as is (with intermittent cussing and teeth grinding when missing a gear).

Thanks!!
 
rride said:
I don't think anything was done to the transmissions, especially for what they are selling for, but I was curious what everyone is experiencing on gear shifting? 1st, 2nd, and 4th gears have always been problems (going into and popping out of gears) only truly solved by back cutting the (at least 1st, 2nd, and 4th) gears on Rotax gearbox (a machining cost cutting savings from the 1992 introduction never improved - until today??).

Aprilia's box was award winning. I'm sure Husky's are rock steady. Hell, even my Honda Nighthawk 750 has a solid transmission, ha ha. This is an Achilles heal I was hoping that would have been addressed since it's a bitch to split the engine case to fix one correctly from the start. And even ATV Rotax Bombardier 650 (single cylinder World Record holder) drag racers never needed to address a transmission after back-cutting gears.

You can finesse it for a long time, but eventually you will incrementally grind away at your gear internals depending on how hard you drive it. But it will last for well over 50K miles as is (with intermittent cussing and teeth grinding when missing a gear).

Thanks!!
Click to expand...

We will let you know at 50k miles, in about 6-9 years. Talk to you in 2019.:cheers:
 
I agree with being the Achilles heal of this engine. I was talking to a BMW mechanic last week. He ask me how I like the bike and the clunky tranny came up in conversation.
He explained the gears are huge and it takes a lot to move them.
When I drag raced my 1260 Katana I had tranny work done by under cutting gears worked well with an air shifter.
If this engine ever gets slip for any reason I'll be thinking of spending the extra $$ to have it done.
But for now I'll just live with it.:excuseme:
 
rride, I've been suffering a bit from what you mentioned. I've had 2nd slip into neutral on it's own quite a few times and have had to put some extra toe into my upshifts occasionally as well. This is my first Rotax, and now I understand the definition of clunky. That said, I absolutely love this bike. I couldn't ask for a better 50/50 Adventure travelling platform.
 
I'm getting the grind from 1st and 2nd. It's to the point I've got to do something about it. It driving me crazy. it's been like that since I took it to the bmw dealership and had them hook it to the moss tool. But they didn't seem to know much about the strada. His words were " I updated the software, but couldn't get it to connect or remap" something real close to that! Don't know what to do. Will the power commander fix these problems ??
 
Another example of the theory of relativity. Between my old Triumphs and my Ural, this Husky transmission is like BUTTER! Slipping into neutral is something I'd pray for on those bikes, considering the only time I ever find neutral is about 2 seconds before the light turns green.
 
Mine is excellent and clunky is not a term I'd use to describe it. The motor clutch and trans on my bike is far and away the highlight of the package imo.
 
Me too, I've only hit a false neutral once or twice when really being sloppy before I carefully adjusted the position of the shifter to the boots I wear...the more miles I put on it the better it works. I don't see this tranny as being any better or worse than any other bike I've owned - meaning it works well.
 
The shifting on my bike has improved with mileage. I've got about 2600 miles on it now & it shifts a lot better. I'll try a top-shelf synthetic at the next oil change and see if that improves it further.
 
Would a slightly shorter or lower angled shifter help? Maybe the stock one is a tad too long or too high and you are not quite lifting the shifter high enough to go all the way into gear? Could be tested by lowering the shifter one spline/tooth. Just thinking out loud. :thinking:
 
I went with a KDX shifter so I could fine adjust it by bending it - for me the splines are too much of a rotation to really get it dialed in right. Once I got the shifter dialed-in the shifting is good. Now when I ride, it's like a dirt bike, up is tight and smooth, down there's just a little more foot uplift than usual, but not much. I can go up and down the tranny in the twisties without thinking about it.
 
Anyone who's gearbox isn't as smooth as butter - have a look at your chain tension, I'd be willing to bet you've got it a bit tight.

My transmission has always been as slick as they come, then one day I was cleaning and adjusting the chain.... got it where it felt about right and rode it around the block.
Nope...a little tight, and I could tell in the way the bike shifted before I checked the chain. Once I got it correct, shifting was silky smooth again. I think this is a great gearbox.

Everyone has their own way of doing things... but I check the chain with my 235# sitting on the bike, reaching down to make sure I have a bit of play.
Feels a bit loose unweighted - but it's as close to the ideal "shortest path" you'll get with the bike on a stand and there being a straight line between both axles and the swingarm pivot.

Many folks will adjust the chain to feel correct either on the sidestand or on a lift - and don't check it with weight on the bike (closer to that shortest path).
If you check it with you sitting on it, and it's tight as a guitar string....back it off.

Decades of dirtbikes has led me to this method which also helps countershaft seal life...
 
Agreed correct tension on the chain is very important...mine is good.:thumbsup:
Tranny's still not as smooth as my 510 was...never will be. But I'm OK with that.
 
kjackbrown said:
Would a slightly shorter or lower angled shifter help? Maybe the stock one is a tad too long or too high and you are not quite lifting the shifter high enough to go all the way into gear? Could be tested by lowering the shifter one spline/tooth. Just thinking out loud. :thinking:
Click to expand...

That's the first thing I'd try too, if I was experiencing the issue described. I have only had mine slip from 2nd to neutral once or twice in 3000km and always as the result of a lazy shift, rather than a gearbox issue. I haven't found any false neutrals :) In fact my wife had a 2003 F650 BMW with the same engine/gearbox and that bike made a very loud clunk on every gear change which I thought was due to poor technique on her part, but when I rode her bike discovered was just the way of the bike. That gearbox clunked so loudly I could hear it even when I was accellerating ahead of her on my ZX12R. My Terra gearbox is very very quiet. The only similarity it has to her F650 is the lack of gearbox acknowledgement that you're in 1st or 5th when you try to shift past those gears.
 
nev.. said:
always as the result of a lazy shift, rather than a gearbox issue.
Click to expand...

That I think has a lot to do with it. If you think about shifting...and clutching...it's really not too bad. But like I said before I really really miss clutchless shifting... Spoiled I guess.
 
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