DR650 - Neutral light woes

**rok-the-boat** · 12th December 2007, 23:09

Harley Evos are known to lose dipsticks in their gearboxes - they just fall off, or break off when inserted incorrectly. The gears mash them up real nice to no ill efect - monkey metal, basically. I have seen it two or three times. Just change the oil, flush out with diesel, and add more oil etc.

**cooneyr** · 27th January 2008, 15:31

Bump

I decided to investigate this "issue" so got a gasket and took the side cover off for a looksee. Got the #2 Phillips head out and undid the easily accessible screw - whoa that was loose. Got another #2 Phillips head bit that comes in them "sets", ground it to about 20mm long, hammered a 6mm ring spanner over it, cut the spanner down to about 50mm and slowly got the other screw out (took about 10 mins). Break cleaner on cotton buds to clean the holes, cleaned the screw threads, red loctite, and put the whole lot back together.

Don't know if it was ever going to be a problem but the screws were defiantly not tight so every possibility of them falling out. Highly recommend that people have a look at theirs. Fiddly but not really that hard to do and all for the cost of a gasket $35 and two drops of loctite. I probably could have got away with not replacing the gasket but already had it so....

Transalper now has the tool (sorry didn't take any pics before I gave it to him) and any others in Chch DR650 riders are most welcome to use it. Would be easier to replace the Phillips head screws with loctite'd hex head 5mm x 20mm bolts but still need the tool to get the old screws out.

Cheers R

**Transalper** · 27th January 2008, 16:01

Yep, did mine today, will do Js next weekend.
I got lucky and the Gasket stayed intact when I split the side cover off. We used some goo just for extra seal when sticking it back together.
I used Loctite 243 on the screws in the end, they were not hard to undo, but not convinced they were anywhere near coming loose enough to work their way out either. Still worth a check IMO.

Was due for an oil change on mine so did that, haven't refilled it yet, thought we'd give the loctite some time to cure first.
Cooneyr just layed his on it's side without dropping the oil. In the end we layed mine on it's side to finish too, just to get the fiddley screw back in.

Here's cooneyr's tool and the gasket goo I used.