Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

My mate has a major drama with his 9.

It will change from 1st to Neutral alright, but you can't get in into second or the rest of the gears.

We've pulled the clutch cover off to check out the shift/selector mechanism which appears fine.
Exhaust and sump has come off to inspect the transmission itself which shows no sign of any damage either.

For some reason we can't figure out it's like the shift drum gets stuck and won't rotate beyond neutral.

Any ideas??

Mick C from Canberra has a thing on his homepage about rebuilding a ZX9 gearbox, but if everything looks ok that might be a bit drastic, changed oil recently?

Have you removed all the shift lever linkages and cleaned and lubed them? For some reason ZX9s are really ensitive to the slightest amount of gummed upness in the lever pivots and linkage swivels.

Is this on the move, or standing still?

Positive Neutral Finder locks out 2nd at a standstill.

Rusty wrote:Is this on the move, or standing still?

Positive Neutral Finder locks out 2nd at a standstill.

i was thinking the same thing....

no matter how hard u try... lol.. when sitting still u wont get 2nd...

Rusty wrote:Is this on the move, or standing still?

The suspense is killing me!

Yep remove the shifter and pegs etc and clean and grease,thats what fixed mine Oh and neka mine changes up and down fine while standing still

z900/zx9 wrote:Yep remove the shifter and pegs etc and clean and grease,thats what fixed mine Oh and neka mine changes up and down fine while standing still :P

Well.........it shouldn't

Rossi wrote:

z900/zx9 wrote:Yep remove the shifter and pegs etc and clean and grease,thats what fixed mine Oh and neka mine changes up and down fine while standing still :P

Well.........it shouldn't

Only way that happens is while burning the back rubber

I'm told it was while trying to find third actually... and the bike was definatley moving.. gonna clean the gear lever and all that stuff, but I've gotta have a bit more of a look at this nuetral finder. I have a feeling it might be causing some dramas too...

i think looking into things much further than just cleaning the selector mechanism at the side is pretty much engine out, split the cases kinda material, so heaps of fun if that is the case... oh and the positive neutral finder really only applies when going from neutral to second, unless i've got things confused here.

In any case from what i've heard if it ever does come down to an engine out-split cases thing it should be reasonably self evident what's broken or bent. Good luck with it, hopefully the external selector is just being iffy.

Here's my article on what I had to do to my 9's gearbox http://www.ksrc-au.com/index.php?itemid=91

It's a bit hard to tell from what you've said if it's the same problem or not, but at least it should give you a bit of an idea what you should be looking for. The 03 gearbox was an improvement over the 98 model too.

Sounds like a broken pin on the selector drum to me. On the earlier models this was behind a cover that was behind the front sprocket, not sure on the later models though. was an easy fix on mine without engine splitting.