Xt600e shift shaft replacement
 

I have a 91 xt600e and the shift shaft splines are gone. It appears the crankshaft has to be split to replace the shaft. Is this correct? Please tell me it isn't so!

Thanks

as usual for a first post, you'd do good to show your bike and introduce yourself to help people sympathize with you :)

there's a relatively simple way to do a bit of a hack to fix the lever on the shaft without resorting to welding.... I would need to do a sketch to explain, but relevant only if you are confident with tools. are you?

Sorry for the lack of etiquette, let me provide a little background. I live in south Louisiana and found this bike on Craigslist listed as scrap. The carb and starter were in pieces and left outside for quite some time. After going through the carb and starter, and having the valves relapped by a machine shop, and a few other minor details the bike has ran great. The bike looks pretty rough, missing and cracked plastic and such, but gets used daily for farm work.

The po was using vice grips to shift, but had the original shift lever. Although the shifter and shaft were stripped I was able replace the bolt in the shift lever with a larger one and got by for awhile.

I ordered a new shaft, lever and seal not realizing the crankcase had to be split to change. I won't have time to split the case for a couple months.

Although this is my first post, I have read the majority of the posts on Yamaha tech to get this bike running. I found very little pertaining to the shift shaft.

Thanks to all who have contributed. I'm sure there's many who lurk, but the info's in previous posts so no need to make a new post. Also, confident enough with tools to try....

Hi and welcome! You can weld it or drill a hole in the lever and into the shaft using a set screw, use loctite on the screw so it wont come loose.

This is one of those case I'd simply widen the gap on the shift lever , try to roughen up the shaft in line with the splines and tighten it down as good as possible then put 2 solid weld tacks to hold it in place . Place the ground clamp on the lever so the juice doesn't go through the transmission and bearings.

Can probably run it till the motor is shot without issues . If the motor ever needs to be rebuild , then fix the shifter shaft. Kind of a hack but for something like this doesn't matter.

My temporary solution is to hammer a piece of wire flat and use this as a wedge between the shaft and lever. I did this in a couple spots, then tightened the nut, and it's secure for now.

Thanks for the input.