K6 1200 nature of the beast?

[Octane]

Hey All,
A few Q's about things my K6 is doing and wondering if yours does the same.
1. Harmonic vibration from 4000rpm to around 4750/5000rpm. You can feel it and sure can hear it on my S through the fairing. Dampened it mostly by rubber insulating the instrument cluster a bit and generally making sure everything around these is lined up and tight.
2. Gear shifts are slick..... nearly too slick. Very little pressure required on the gear selector to shift up or down. Never had it pop out of any gear or anything. Never had a problem with Neutral etc but it just feels like the oil has had an overdose of Teflon with added graphite, moly and everything else mankind has developed to reduce friction. The detents just don't feel as positive as my later model Bandit.
3. Noticeable gear whine in 3rd and less so in 4th.
Bike has done 34,000 km.
Am interested in hearing your thoughts.

[Red01]

1. Nature of the beast.
2. My K1 shifts butter smooth, but the detents are positive.  Not as positive as my C14, but definately smoother than the C14.
3. Don't have anything for ya here.  When gears go bad, it's not usually 3rd or 4th... Usually 2nd is the first to go.

[PaulVS]

Try a carb sync for the vibration.

[deanozx10r]

The vibration I have that to and on my bike its between 70-78 mph about that same rpm range. But the sound you hear in 4-5 gear maybe your chain, thats what it sounds to me on mine. What you saying sounds just like my bike!!

[rider123]

My tranny whines a bit, nothing to worry about.

[deanozx10r]

How many miles are on this bike?? If you can hear the tranny then there maybe more to it maybe a bearing going out.

[rider123]

I have only 40K kms on mine, it whines slightly in the higher gears at low rpms. Did it from day 1, my old GSX750EF had a similar whine. It's not that loud. My friends Bandit does the same, it's just the nature of the tranny. The gearing is quite tall, it really could use another gear to space the gearing out, I guess thats why the new Water cooled Bandits have 6 speeds not 5. Once over 3K its stops and I very, very rarely run around in 5th gear at less than 3K. Mostly when I was too lazy to step down to 4th. In fact it whines less now then when new so I'd say it's getting better not worse as the thing breaks in. I'd say 40K kms is just barely breaking in these trannys which have been know to go way, way over 100,000 miles.(Record, I think I heard, was 300,000 miles on the same tranny, some motorcycle courier in the UK)

[Octane]

It's only 3rd gear which has that straight cut gear noise about it. 60km/h and 3rd is the combination I use.

[rider123]

Also if you use the sewing machine stock exhaust, you'll hear all kinds of stuff that thing is so quiet.

[Octane]

No, it has the "Staintune" exhaust. It is quiet for an aftermarket straight through pipe. Get up it and it will scream but only over 6,000rpm.
This gearshift thing is bugging me. Looking on the parts diagrams there is a return spring on the selector. Maybe this is the cause?
Or the gear shift cam? It shifts with no problem but it shifts into the gear too easily. No real resistance or that positive "clack" sound when selecting a gear. It just falls into the gear. When going for neutral either from 1st or 2nd you have to be careful not to select 2nd from 1st or vise versa. These just very little feedback from the shift mechanism. Any other gear it hasn't ever overselected.
I even looked at getting a good second heand engine/gearbox to change this one out. $2000 for a bare engine with no electrics or carbs. Hmmmmmm. Do these engine have any design faults WRT the gearbox?

[Red01]

Two large for a bare engine? 
Jeez, for another $500 I'll sell you my whole bike!!

[Octane]

Yeah, I reckon that was too steep! Two Grand for a second  hand engine / gearbox? Problem I have is there are very few moto wreckers around where I live. Car wreckers - yep you trip over them there are that many lying around. Car engines you can buy an exchange reco one for about that much. Bikes are totally different. Sucks. It's probably me anyways. I'm just used to my still-not-run-in GSX1250FA shifting habits. I just received Rider123's donation of 112.5 jets in the post  and will be shortly installing them.

[rider123]

Unless it starts getting into shifting problems I wouldn't worry about it for now. From what I've read about the New FI Bandits the tranny is a little notchier so you just maybe used to the notchyness. My bike shifts so slickly sometimes I can hardly tell it's so slick. But I'm used to the GS bourne trannies which have a good reputation for breaking in very nicely and their slickness. Other bikes I've owned have had notchier trannies compared to this bike and the GS series from Suzuki. In particular I had a Yamaha Seca 550 which was really notchy, not bad shifted fine, smooth etc. It just didn't have the well meshed gearbox the GS series has which includes the Bandit up until 2006.(it's an old GSXR gearbox) The Seca sounded like there was one of Santa's angry elves with a sledgehammer manually smashing the cogs, but never had a problem with it. Maybe Suzuki have more sanguine elves in their gearboxes? Maybe the Suzuki elves are on Ritalin? Who knows?


Suzuki sound --- muted "snick"
Yamaha sound --- "clunk!"

[Octane]

I took a 9000km old K6 B12 for a test ride yesterday. Was going to trade one of my other bikes in on it but the changeover was too large. Anyhoo, I found the gearboxes were almost identical (between my K6 (34,500km) and this one). The only thing really was mine has that 3rd gear whine. The shifts were almost the same - real slick. So now I feel better for the exercise. Pity about the changeover. The red K6's really do it for me. Another thing was the bike I test rode was completely stock. My K6 has only a slip on ATM and soon to have some jet changes. The difference was notable. Even with just the pipe it picks up so much better.
Bring on the jet mod!