Middle Gear Update

Thought I was the only loose nut on this bike but turns out there was another. I started having a nasty worn bearing/gravel sound coming from my middle gear housing. Since no one here had any idea what may be wrong I finally found a mechanic I felt I could trust. Took the bike over & at first they said "normal sound without load" So I put it up on the center stand & put it in gear with pressure from my boot on rear wheel with no change to nasty noise. They agreed to tear it down & take a look.

It turns out that the nut holding the assembly together has backed off completely ! They could turn it by hand ! The new parts were ordered a couple of days ago & YES has approved the fix. Hope parts are in soon & fix does not require removing motor(question I asked here) from chassis.

I can only imagine the damage to cases etc had this came apart & locked up the wheel at speed. I would have been all over the road, crumpled most likely.

I can't tell what a bitch it's been not being able to ride. I hope to rearrange my life (read: find money) in the future to afford a sport bike backup.

Still hoping someone with knowledge can tell me if the motor has to be pulled (not clear in manual) & if they have ever heard of this problem before ?

The "real question":

Is there any way to tighten the loose nut sitting in the rider's seat?

IIRC, someone else has had work done on the middle gear. I "think" they were able to loosen the engine mounts and swing the engine down enough to complete the work without completely removing it from the engine bay. That would still require taking the radiator loose and swinging it forward with the engine (and removing lots of other tidbits from the sides).

This nuts been loose for so long that people just stare and wonder "what the F..k happened?" :crazy:

The book quotes 13 hrs for the job, Just hoping it didn't have to come out but whatever it takes from a dealer eh ? They're saying probably spend 18+ hrs with removal so looks like my mechanic will take a bit of time with it. Seemed to be pretty knowledgable guy, the best they have there. I found out beemerdons has had trouble with this dealership before new manager, Hope I'm O.K. there, wish I'd have known before but options for a good YES mechanic are slim here. He did turn me on to a great mechanic for my valve adj when needed if I don't do it.

Went thru 24 pages of "+middle +gear" and found nothing . . .

Did a search using Warchild ( )and +middle +gear and found something FINALLY ! Only took a week or so to find out several people have some knowledge on the subject. Since no one may have checked Dean Tanjis middle shaft for tightness of this nut , it may have been similar reason for failure. If it had backed off some (but still holding a bit of pressure) it would've been same result as mine at finger tight.

Robert, here's a little trick: Use Google! I went to Google and typed in:

middle gear site:fjrforum.com and got this link to results.

I believe the second one on the page is the one Warchild posted about Dean Tanji, but there are others.

Thanks Mike. I though there must be a better way to search on this site. I've tried for a long time to use the search function here but mostly get useless results if more than one word is used.

I just hope this post will help others that may notice a bit too much noise from gear housing before real trouble strikes.

Picked up the FJR last night. Seems to run great ao far. 100% covered by YES. Here are pictures of what happened to both middle gears when the shaft nut backed completely off. Check out only about 2 threads left on nut ! It couldn't fall off the shaft so it stayed in place on the end & beat & polished all the threads away !

FJRobert,

Wow! This incident and pictrures are amazing. Things down the road could have been alot worse. Glad to hear you got it all fixed and all OK. Can we say AMEN to YES? Yes.

Thanks for sharing. (It is OK now to stop doing wheelies)

Wow!

Glad you got things taken care of gratis Robert. Too bad about all the riding time you missed, but I guess shit happens and at least your final result is positive.

Any theories as to why the nut loosened up, or backed off in the first place?

Glad you got it taken care of before it took care of you.

FJRobert said:

I started having a nasty worn bearing/gravel sound coming from my middle gear housing.

Click to expand...

So FJRobert, exactly how bad was the sound and how many miles did you have when first noticed and then finally repaired? Not that I'm going to panic or anything, but mine has been noisy for several thousand miles. Much more so than my prior '04 and a couple '05s that I've spun the rear tire on. The intensity hasn't increased (or decreased) over time... but inquiring minds want to know just the same.

TIA

--G

Amen to YES ! No theories from the dealer but the parts are there if Yamaha calls for them. All I can think of is the factory didn't get the torque right on the bolt. It kinda sounded like gravel in a cement mixer at a low level. The Service Manager at first thought it may be normal backlash sound after a ride.When I put it on the stand and put pressure on rear tire the noise didn't change. It first became slightly noticeable at about 22k miles & was repaired at 24k miles. I'm going for another shakedown ride now. I changed the oil after40 miles . . . . .

Geezz wonder why it was so noisy?

Glad she's up and running again bro.

:jester: