Factory Pro Shift Kit

[Mr2Mike]

Has anyone installed one of these on their bike? If so, did it make a significant improvement?

[MK3 Dan]

For which bike?

[FazerBoy]

Yes, I've got one on my 954 Blade.

It is an improvement and makes the gears slip in more easily, but I wouldn't say it was a must-have.

It's a bit of a hassle to fit and I would only do it if you're swapping the clutch anyway.

[Yazza54]

I'm going to fit one in the rd/banshee engine that's going in the mito. I've heard these are a good mod on fzr/thunderaces too.. Makes a bigger difference on some bikes I guess. What exactly don't you like about the gear change?

[Mr2Mike]

It's for my 918 Blade. The gearchange feels a little rough to me, you have to give a slow, deliberate push/pull and you can literally feel the internals moving into place through the lever. If I try to hurry it I get a false neutral occasionally. It's only got about 15k miles on it, and it's recently had new oil and new chain and sprockets (correctly tensioned). Other than that it's ok, it never jumps out of gear, makes no nasty noises and the clutch works nicely with no dragging etc.

By comparison the gearbox on my Tornado feels like a swiss watch, beautifully slick and fast, never baulks and I've never found a false neutral.

Now that I have sorted out the suspension on the Blade, I'd like to improve the gearchange if possible.

[Yazza54]

May well be worth it, the shift pro kits are supposed to select more smoothly as the selector bearing moves over the shift star. Does that kit come with a modified shift star? Another mod I've seen done is to grind down the peaks on the shift star slightly to make them more rounded rather than pointy, helps with the same problems.

[Mr2Mike]

Fitted the Factory Pro kit today, and in the process I found what is probably the main cause of the ropey gear change:



This plate has a larger internal diameter to the rest (and is therefore weaker) and sits at the back of the stack with an anti-judder bellville spring inside it. The rest of the clutch looks perfect, no notches on the basket and the rest of the steel and friction plates are like new apart from this one. Is this a common Fireblade issue?

Ordered a new one, but won't be here until Wednesday