Howdy, I'm relatively new to riding and I've just had a nice ride from Wellington to Christchurch on my Honda CB400sf and the gear shift linkage dropped out a couple of times. There is now a new clunky kind of sound in the lower gears. I'm going to get a new linkage that hasn't had its thread stripped, but I can't see how that would make a difference to this new sound. Any ideas on what could have cause this?

Cheers