Good afternoon from Miami!

Wondering if any other Panam owners have had gearing issues? I drove around my dad's bike to see if there is anything obvious he should worry about and I found a couple of things...

The most obvious one is that the bike at a stop will, on occasion, "fall" into neutral. I had gone up to red lights and stayed in first gear and when it turns green it apparently went into neutral without any noticeable indication. The other odd thing is this bike does not like 3rd gear. I can get to 40ish mph in 2nd with no real vibrations but if I get to 3rd I will get lots of high frequency buzzing and then shifting to 4th around 40-50mph gets rid of the buzzing and the engine is back to being smooth. Has anyone had similar engine behavior like this? Aside from that, the bike has run just fine but for me personally I am shocked at how hot it runs and its twice as noticeable down here in South Florida.

Thanks,
Chris

 

Have never heard of anything like this happening on a PA. Is the bike running spec synthetic?

I did once rent a RG and for the life of me I couldn’t get it into neutral. I was told afterwards that the cause might have been the wrong oil. That’s where I would start looking…..

 

As far as I'm aware, it is running synthetic. He got run through on this VIP maintenance package when he bought the bike so to get every nickel he can out of it he takes it in every 4k miles for the oil change service. When we rode around he jokingly told me he deals with the issue of going into neutral on its own by just resting his foot over the shift lever at red lights if he decides to keep it in gear. As is, you can get in to neutral easily enough, minus the quirk of it doing it without your input lol.

 

On my 3rd PanAm, never had this issue not have I heard of it. I'd have it checked out for sure.