ATG
Registered user
My first statement and disclaimer is that I don’t claim that the GSW gear changes and/or finding neutral to be perfect!
In fact, after getting my 2012/13 GSW after having owned 3 different GS 1200 (2005/2006 and 2011, all premium models ) ridden for some 160.000 Km ( some 100,000 miles) I can say I was pretty disappointed to, otherwise, the best GS of the bunch.
I wrote nasty letters to BMW in Brazil, bitched a lot at the dealership, read everything there was to read on GSPOT and UKGser and tried everything I’ve learned on these forums (lowering clutch fluid level, lowering engine oil level, changing the gear shift lever for a Wunderlich model, adjusting very carefully the gear shift position, burning a little the clutch, riding the bike and learning what is the best way to change gears on the GSW. In a manner of speaking I was for quite some time trying to learn how the bike wanted me to change gears…
Overall, after having done all of the above and after riding my GSW for close to 9,000 Km ( some 5500 miles ) I can say that we get along just great: finding neutral is very easy and I don’t even have to look at the dash to check if it is in neutral; gear changes, either up or down, are smooth and just as good if not better than on any of the earlier GSs I owned. Perhaps it is important to mention that my mileage was mostly done in heavy city traffic, some 70% of the total, and this type of riding is, perhaps, similar to twice as much road riding.
Lowering both oil levels and clutch burning helped a bit. Careful adjustment of the gear shift lever to my own preferences and body shape, also. So did changing the gear shift lever for a Wunderlich lever that allowed me to have a shorter gear lever but with the same throw as the original . All these together helped a lot in making neutral very easy to find.
In the beginning, say for the first 1500 Km (1,000 miles or so ) it was always going from 1st into 2nd then again into 1st ; it felt like neutral was too slippery and very hard to find. At times I had to play between 1st and 2nd 3 to 5 times to find neutral and the hotter the engine the worst it became. Presently its smooth with the bike either hot or cold; it just makes little or no difference and is, perhaps, better when hot!
Gear changes were never as awful as some claim but always smoother from 3rd gear up.
I really put a lot of thought trying to figure out what could be the problem; was it the clutch ? the gearbox? Both ?
One day, quite many miles ago I thought came to my mind: How would it upshift without using the clutch ? I found that if set at the proper wheel/engine speed for each gear it was smooth and noiseless with absolutely no grinding noises.
I suppose if those of you that have noisy gear changes try to upshift clutchless, after a little bit of training, will also find that it is entirely possible to achieve smooth, noiseless gear changes.
If you get to change gears smoothly in this fashion you will, perhaps, exclude the gear box as a problem and the culprit will be the clutch. It is notorious that wet clutches, while longer lasting and prone to withstand quite more abuse, are not as smooth as dry clutches.
It is my opinion that the GSW’s clutch is quite inefficient in its job of disengaging the engine from the gearbox and that is the major reason of the gear grinding that some experience as well as the difficulty in finding neutral and needless not to mention the 1st gear “clunck” when stopped.
The objective of this post this post is to suggest that, perhaps, there is a way to change gears in a similar way as one does when gear shifting clutch less but still using the clutch and, as result, obtaining smoother gear changes.
I came to the conclusion that I had to learn how to change gears in a slightly different fashion in order to overcome the GSW’s clutch limitations. I have noticed that:
1 The higher the RPM I was when gear shifting the more noiseless it became. Perhaps this is not only a result of higher RPM but also due to the fact that when raising RPMs I tended to shift gears in a faster way and therefore did not let the engine’s RPM fall so much.
2 Also, with higher RPM it takes a longer time for the engine to fall down to lower revs.
After these experiments I tried to, when gear shifting , to decrease the rpm in a slower fashion by moving the throttle back slowly in order to do not decrease the engine’s RPM as much during the shifting. All these made my gear changes more similar to when I change gears clutch less and much smoother.
Again, I don’t claim to have fixed the GSW’s innefficient clutch just wanted to present the way I found to make it work in a way that, for me, is completely satisfactory.
Even If these ideas work for only one of you I will have accomplished my objective !
Give it a try, it may work for you too.
Andre
In fact, after getting my 2012/13 GSW after having owned 3 different GS 1200 (2005/2006 and 2011, all premium models ) ridden for some 160.000 Km ( some 100,000 miles) I can say I was pretty disappointed to, otherwise, the best GS of the bunch.
I wrote nasty letters to BMW in Brazil, bitched a lot at the dealership, read everything there was to read on GSPOT and UKGser and tried everything I’ve learned on these forums (lowering clutch fluid level, lowering engine oil level, changing the gear shift lever for a Wunderlich model, adjusting very carefully the gear shift position, burning a little the clutch, riding the bike and learning what is the best way to change gears on the GSW. In a manner of speaking I was for quite some time trying to learn how the bike wanted me to change gears…
Overall, after having done all of the above and after riding my GSW for close to 9,000 Km ( some 5500 miles ) I can say that we get along just great: finding neutral is very easy and I don’t even have to look at the dash to check if it is in neutral; gear changes, either up or down, are smooth and just as good if not better than on any of the earlier GSs I owned. Perhaps it is important to mention that my mileage was mostly done in heavy city traffic, some 70% of the total, and this type of riding is, perhaps, similar to twice as much road riding.
Lowering both oil levels and clutch burning helped a bit. Careful adjustment of the gear shift lever to my own preferences and body shape, also. So did changing the gear shift lever for a Wunderlich lever that allowed me to have a shorter gear lever but with the same throw as the original . All these together helped a lot in making neutral very easy to find.
In the beginning, say for the first 1500 Km (1,000 miles or so ) it was always going from 1st into 2nd then again into 1st ; it felt like neutral was too slippery and very hard to find. At times I had to play between 1st and 2nd 3 to 5 times to find neutral and the hotter the engine the worst it became. Presently its smooth with the bike either hot or cold; it just makes little or no difference and is, perhaps, better when hot!
Gear changes were never as awful as some claim but always smoother from 3rd gear up.
I really put a lot of thought trying to figure out what could be the problem; was it the clutch ? the gearbox? Both ?
One day, quite many miles ago I thought came to my mind: How would it upshift without using the clutch ? I found that if set at the proper wheel/engine speed for each gear it was smooth and noiseless with absolutely no grinding noises.
I suppose if those of you that have noisy gear changes try to upshift clutchless, after a little bit of training, will also find that it is entirely possible to achieve smooth, noiseless gear changes.
If you get to change gears smoothly in this fashion you will, perhaps, exclude the gear box as a problem and the culprit will be the clutch. It is notorious that wet clutches, while longer lasting and prone to withstand quite more abuse, are not as smooth as dry clutches.
It is my opinion that the GSW’s clutch is quite inefficient in its job of disengaging the engine from the gearbox and that is the major reason of the gear grinding that some experience as well as the difficulty in finding neutral and needless not to mention the 1st gear “clunck” when stopped.
The objective of this post this post is to suggest that, perhaps, there is a way to change gears in a similar way as one does when gear shifting clutch less but still using the clutch and, as result, obtaining smoother gear changes.
I came to the conclusion that I had to learn how to change gears in a slightly different fashion in order to overcome the GSW’s clutch limitations. I have noticed that:
1 The higher the RPM I was when gear shifting the more noiseless it became. Perhaps this is not only a result of higher RPM but also due to the fact that when raising RPMs I tended to shift gears in a faster way and therefore did not let the engine’s RPM fall so much.
2 Also, with higher RPM it takes a longer time for the engine to fall down to lower revs.
After these experiments I tried to, when gear shifting , to decrease the rpm in a slower fashion by moving the throttle back slowly in order to do not decrease the engine’s RPM as much during the shifting. All these made my gear changes more similar to when I change gears clutch less and much smoother.
Again, I don’t claim to have fixed the GSW’s innefficient clutch just wanted to present the way I found to make it work in a way that, for me, is completely satisfactory.
Even If these ideas work for only one of you I will have accomplished my objective !
Give it a try, it may work for you too.
Andre
I was speaking to two blokes from BMW uk yesterday, and they also confirmed that the issues are completely clutch related, and not gearbox. 
Bloody hell! freewheeling round a bend with no drive what so ever .... 
). I get the idea that, say, an 1150 is a better bike than a WC1200 for some. And it's because the WC1200 is a new breed. It doesn't want to bimble. It needs a bit of hooning to get it to work. Andre is absolutely right, that the gear change works better in higher revs, it works better when you get on with it, and it all becomes a bit more slick when you start to ride the bike a bit like a sports bike.
