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Posted by Tim
- January 01, 2024, 22:06:25 PMHi all hope you had a great holiday and Happy New Year!
My Bike has developed some issues and I really want some expert opinions before I dive in to fix them.
My ride is a 2002 Drifter 1500 FI shaft drive. 33,000 miles. I have paperwork from before I bought saying the clutch was rebuilt at 25,000. Under hard throttle it will 'slip' and even pops into neutral on its own if I really hit The trottle hard. I'm thinking I will rebuild the clutch over the winter using Mean Streak springs. Question is - shouldn't a rebuild last longer than 8,000 miles?
TIA for any advice or similar experiences.
I asked on the FB group and got the following responses:
"Popping out of gear in 2nd is the first sign of worn gear dogs. When this begins folks start stomping it back into gear and end up bending the shift forks. Kawasaki has discontinued the parts needed to fix this. And even if you went with used components splitting the case and doing the repair you are looking at $2000 or more. As for the clutch it probably needed a clutch diaphragm spring and the shop replaced the frictions instead of what the real problem was. There are documented 1500s with over 200,00 miles on them with the factory clutch after upgrading the spring and adding Judge Washers. Your best bet is to find a good used engine and just swap it out."
Someone else said:
"You may have two different problems - the slip is most likely clutch related. Popping into or out of gear usually is shift fork or/and gears worn."
Clearly splitting cases or swapping engines is a pretty big job so if anyone can offer any insight I would surely appreciate it.
Cheers, Tim