Riding home tonight and going down the gears for a roundabout and suddenly the lever wont return on the downshifts, but will on the upshifts. I did a search on here and found a couple of threads which indicate the problem might be a failed gear return spring. I can manage to get the lever back to a mid position using my boot but obviously its not the best.I tried to bodge some elastics as a stop gap but couldnt get that to work either. Question is as i need the bike every day to get to and from work i want to get it into the dealer tomorrow if possible but am i at risk of further damage to the gearbox riding it there as everything sounded and felt fine.... i understand the spring is located withing the casing so i have concerns and dont want to fuck the entire box for a 6 quid part (plus shedloads of labour of course) Bike is 2013 Multi GT with 22000 on it and due an oil service in 500 miles
You should have no problem. I had the return spring break on my ST4s a few years ago and ran it to work for a week while I was waiting on a new spring. The trick is to return the lever to the central position with your toe after every downshift. Changing the spring is a bigger job than you might think because the flywheel has to come off and a least some of the oil has to be drained. Getting the oil service done at the same time would make sense.
You should be fine riding the bike, it will almost certainly be the gear lever return spring that's broke and located behind the crankcase cover, it will have broke a leg off the spring, but the spring will stay in its location and can't cause any further damage. I changed mine, not to difficult...but it's not a job unless you have a recent amount of mechanical knowledge The spring is pennies but dealer will charge a few hours labour
The one on my Scrambler broke last year and the broken off leg got carried round with the flywheel and jammed between the starter intermediate gear and the starter flywheel gear, effectively seizing the starter. If it hasn't happened already I wouldn't worry about it, the broken off bit will have dropped to the bottom of the casing.
Cheers fellas, i took the chance and rode it to work this morning and managed to get it to Carl Harrison at lunchtime to get the work done and the oil service in at the same time as the repair needs the oil dropping anyway :thumbsup:
Just an update, as suspected the return spring had snapped and it has been replaced along with another spring at the top as the gearbox was all open it made sense to do both rather than risk the other one snapping shortly. What wasnt expected was a tiny notch in the selector arm (i think) that moved it a fraction out of true so that has also been replaced by Carl out of his stock of s/h parts Cant speak highly enough of Carl Harrison who is a recommended independant Ducati specialist and managed to turn the bike around for me quickly as he knew i needed it for commuting as well as fitting in the service along with the gear lever work at substantially less expense than a main dealer .... even offered to drop me off home in the company van as it was near his route home that night when i left the bike
