BMW R1200R R1150R/T F800 K1200R R1100R/T R1250R RnineT Message Board

Well, this happened as I was riding on my 02 1150r. Obviously not on purpose, but still a fact. Yes, I felt like an idiot.

I was doing about 75mph in 5th gear and was riding for some time. I stretched my left leg forward above the cylinder head and when I was returning my leg to it's original position I rested it on the gear shifter instead of the foot peg. This caused the bike to downshift to 4th, without engaging the clutch. I was also wearing a new pair of riding boots that I didn't have alot of "feel' for to make things worse. The bike slowed much as it does with shifting with the clutch engaged and I then realized what I had done and my foot was on the shifter and not the foot peg.

So no noticeable damage and the ride is still the same. I've probably put about a couple hundred miles on the bike since then but when I was wiping it down today, I noticed that there was a fine residue in and around the housing area just above the shifter, near the foot peg.. It is also around the suspension adjust nob.

I don't know if the residue is just some road gunk that i picked up along the way or it is some aftermath of my bungled shifting. Have I done some serious damage? Anybody else do this or heard of something like this?

echo42kp,
From your description of how it occurred, it was no big deal. Even if it screeched or chirped the rear tire, it would not do any measureable damage to the very rugged transmission gear engagement dogs. The pressure on the shift lever was also not severe enough to bend any of the shift mechanism parts. You just made an unintentional sloppy downshift.

Seasoned/experienced riders that understand the all the mechanical happenings can smoothly shift up or down without the clutch, especially at the lower end of the RPM range. When I had my `02 R1150R, that was the case, except for the harder to do smoothly every time 1st to 2nd upshift. On my F800ST, any gear change is effortlessly easy to do smoothly without using the clutch.

It's a handy skill to have in case your clutch control systems ever fail.