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Thanks Duane. I'm pretty confident this will cure it, looking back, the throwout bearing used to be a little noisy, a light squeak, at idle, hot. It would go away when I took the slack in the lever up, so I knew it wasn't 100%. Other than that, the clutch feels great to me, disengages cleanly, no creep, no slip under load. When cold, it won't always fall into first, took a couple of toe stabs to get it in .

I'm going to leave the rest of the trans alone for now, fix the clutch release, stuff it back in and see what happens. The trans worked too well to mess with. Shafts spin nice and smooth, always shifted all right, ain't broke(I'm pretty sure), ain't going to fix it. Fluid looked way better than the first time I drained it. And realistically, that trans is pretty easy to pull, I'm willing to risk it, I don't really want to get into a trans rebuild right now. I'd like to find a used one that needs work, and go through it at my leisure, but there's a lot of irons in the fire right now, so we'll see, someday.

Shifting into 1st when cold is really quite easy. Since the oil is cold in the transmission, as soon as the clutch lever is pulled in, the shafts stop turning. When they are sitting still, they don't want to engage.

The trick is super simple. Start by adding a little bit of preload on the lever. Pull the clutch lever in and at the same time add some toe pressure. If you got the dreaded clunk, it was too quick with the toe pressure. Slow up slightly.

A rider soon learns that when hot, which is most of the time, one gets less, or no clunk if one pulls the lever and waits a second or two, then use the toe pressure to get into 1st. That won't work when cold. It is the same as when one tries to shift when the engine is off. One must roll the bike, or use a foot on the rear wheel to rotate it a bit while pressure is on the shift lever.

We have probably all watched someone stomping on the lever repeatedly with the engine off and getting madder and madder because it won't go into gear.

Duane Ausherman wrote:
We have probably all watched someone stomping on the lever repeatedly with the engine off and getting madder and madder because it won't go into gear.

That's a self-fixing problem, as the shift lever will eventually break off, and then you can just ride everywhere in whatever gear you were in when it happened.

OK, over the week end I pulled trans, replaced the release rod, ends, bearing, seals. New design lever pin and keeper, new drive-shaft boot , lubed splines. Bike seems happy, works as well or maybe a little better than before. Noise is gone, although listening close this morning cold, maybe there is a bit of noise from the trans area, it goes away warm so we'll have to see.