[Diagnose my Shifting Problem, Puh-lease]

try some 20 50 synthetic mobil oil, motorcycle..grade and get back to us.

20w50 is way too heavy for normal use here except for July and August . . . I run Rotella T6 5w40 synthetic in all my bikes and putting it in the Bird didn't make any difference in the shifting. Is there something extra-special about Mobil?

[Diagnose my Shifting Problem, Puh-lease]

After about 1500 km on my new-to-me XX (49K on it now), I was in love except for the tranny; specifically the 1-2 upshift. I'm well familiar with Honda's trademark double clunk when going from first to second, but the Bird was more of a double-THUD. Below 4,000 rpm anyway -- above 4,000 it was more of a double-CRASH-RATTLE-CLANK and then often as not being kicked back into neutral. If that happened, it would generally click nicely into second gear on the next try a few seconds later when I recovered from the trauma and stopped cringing in expectation of chunks of shattered gears blasting up through the seat. The noise was that bad. No other shifts, up or down, gave me any trouble whatsoever.

I did some (as in, a shit-ton) of reading followed by troubleshooting, droning up and down the road shifting from first to second and back using every possible combination of rpm, throttle, and shifting technique I could think of. Nothing seemed to help except grannying at low throttle, low rpm. I adjusted the shifter to a few different positions (no change), tried my well worn in work boots instead of my riding boots (slight improvement, possibly imaginary and not consistent), even wore my riding boots for a weekend doing construction work going up and down ladders all day to work all the stiffness out of them (and nearly died from the heat, but that's a different story).

I finally gave up in disgust and resigned myself to just trying to baby it along until I had time to tear into the transmission. Then today on my way home from work I got annoyed enough to spend some more time doing the 1st-2nd shuffle (I'm sure the people living along my route were about as irritated as I was) and somehow hit upon the right combination of shifter preload, throttle movement, cursing, and voodoo to make perfect smooth shifts at unprecedented high rpm and/or heavy throttle.

So my question is, what's the deal? I'm pretty sure a new-off-the-showroom-floor Blackbird didn't require the rider to learn a specific technique by trial and error just to make decent 1-2 shifts. So from the description of what the bike was doing, and what made it better, does anyone have an idea of what might be going on, mechanically? Bent shift fork, something worn or loose from nearly 50,000 km of god-knows-what, tranny about to explode, god hates me, etc.

OR, am I just a tard who couldn't shift, and I've just never encounted anything discerning enough to call me on it until I met the Bird's 1-2 upshift?

[Changed my own tires for the first time....]

I'm planning on making a tire changer this summer. I don't have the room (or the need) to have it set up permanently so I'm going to install some threaded anchors in the floor so I can bolt it down securely when needed.

[Amsoil substitute]

Amsoil is very good at marketing -- as they should be, considering it's a MLM outfit. There are certainly no shortage of Amsoil proponents out there, usually sporting a fanatical drink-the-coolaid fervor. But I don't see any evidence that Amsoil is any better than any other quality oil (except of course, in the promotional stuff Amsoil itself floods the internet with). Until something equivalent goes on sale at a better price, I'll stick to Rotella T6 5W-40 full synthetic, which by the way is now JASO-MA certified. Shell never cared too much about that in the past since motorcycles are a tiny market compared to heavy equipment, but enough people asked about it to make them finally realize that getting the cert was an easy way to take some market share away from the overpriced snake oil targeted at riders. And I'm not talking specifically about Amsoil, it seems that pretty much anything with "motorcycle" on the label is overpriced by a good 50%.

You should stick with the 10W-40. It is what the motor was designed for. Too thin and the oil might allow some metal to metal contact under heavy loads because the pump can't keep the clearances full of oil. Too thick and there might not be enough pressure down stream to fill those clearances.

You're half right -- you should stick to a 40 weight oil. 5W-40 is also a 40 weight oil; so is 0W-40. Multi-grade oils must meet ALL the requirements and restrictions of both grades listed. When warmed up, 5W-40 or 0W-40 will perform exactly like 10W-40, but will flow much better than 10W-40 when cold, which may or may not be a big deal for you. I ride in temps ranging from -5C to nearly 40C, and sometimes see nearly that temperature range in the span of a few days