[hewittpm]

I’ve gotten my hand on 2000 Honda Rancher 350 ES, and the shifting keeps giving me problems. At first it would not get higher than 2nd and would not gear back down unless it was manually done by hand with emergency gear shift. So from there I went through all electrical wiring harnesses and cleaned and pulled gear shift motor and sprayed with some white lithium grease on some of the gears. From there went ahead and put a new starter and battery in it. As of then, it seemed to be fine to go out and put under a real test ride as it seemed to be shifting up and down through all gears with ease. I went out today and it would get stuck into 4th and I would have to manually shut machine down and restart for it to gear down. But that only happened twice early in the ride. While I was attempting to climb a hill I came stuck in a hole. I shifted into reverse to try and become free. I got into a reverse then tried to gear back through neutral to get into 1st gear and nothing happened. It was stuck in neutral. I tried manually shifting and nothing was happening at all... rocked it back and forth and nothing happened still stuck in neutral. Does anyone have any ideas on how I should go bout troubleshooting and repair? Thanks in advance.

 

[retro]

Pretty much repeat what you've already done, but use synthetic grease, dielectric grease and be a lot more thorough. I've typed up a lot of general info in various threads on preparing ES systems for reliability and long life. Search for them, open the shift motor, repack support bearings, waterproof everything... in general follow the advice you read. Don't use white grease anywhere on a Honda, its inappropriate, it causes ES systems to drag and fail.

Welcome to the forums!

 

[hewittpm]

Thanks, I’ll use this advice and report back after the weekend.

 

[hewittpm]

Even though it won’t manually shift we still think maintenance/cleaning will Help? I guess I’m just overly concerned that this is something mechanical the way that it happened from trying to get out of a whole...

Thanks! This forum is great!

 

[Carolynskii]

Yes take the little cover off and check those tiny gears again. They be hung up or broken from trying too hard to manually shift it.
After you take those tiny gears off you can try to manually shift it with them out. If it still won’t shift then you have a tranny or linkage problem.

 

[Goober]

Try adjusting the clutch–that’s what mine needed. Clutch adjust and new battery

That makes sense now you mentioned it was working before you got in that hole