2018 F3 Limited shift issues

[Revrent]

A week ago my wife had an issue shifting out of first gear on her 2018 F3 Limited (it is an automatic). She was able to shut the bike down and restart and drove a few miles with the same issue again with coming out of first gear. She shut it off again and restarted and a few miles down the road she had trouble shifting out of 2nd gear. She finally was able to get it to shift normally and decided to take it home and call the dealer. On the way home, it started doing it again and this time she was unable to get it to upshift at all. Reverse was working fine so she rode the remaining 2 miles in reverse with me riding behind her and keeping an eye out for safety.

We had it towed to the dealer and when it got to the dealer, they were able to get it to shift fine. They are looking at it tomorrow but they tell me that if they cannot find anything that I will owe them about $160 (we have the BEST warranty). I suspect I might have to call BRP as we have no plans to bring the bike home without a fix.

I thought I had seen some others have problems but the search bar does not seam to be working for me this morning? Would like to hear if anyone else has had this problem and the fix.

Thank you
John

[Peter Aawen]

Here's a quote re a possible reason for this behaviour from this thread: https://www.spyderlovers.com/forums/...ighlight=Shift - one of the many threads on this 'F3 shift problem'.....

Hello everyone, Im not tech savy, so I hope you are able to see the picture I attached. If not, it shows a small cable attached to a screw that communicates between the paddle shifter and the transmission. There is a metal plate below this that protects this and other mechanisms from road hazards and debri. I was able to identify that the screw that is supposed to move that cable freely when I shift was scraping on the metal plate below it. I pointed this out to Steve, the service manager at Motor City Power Sports in Bloomfield, MI. He quickly figured that the protective metal plate must have been hit from below when the previous owner rode over something, so he unscrewed the plate from below the trike, let it fall back down to its proper resting position, and then screwed it back in. It left about 2mm of space that allowed the cable to move freely. Problem solved! No more getting stuck in neutral. Steve didn't even charge me, thank you Steve! I convinced him to take a $20 to let me buy him lunch, and I was on my way. Thank you to everyone who tried to help me out with this. I hope this information helps someone.

The other thing that can produce the symptoms you describe is a low oil level.... did you check that at all??


Ps: re the search not working, I just used the search bar up the top right; clicked the bar so the 2 item drop down list appeared & clicked the 'Search Titles Only' box; then entered 'Shift' before submitting and I looked for titles with F3 in them. That 'basic search' really doesn't like to work on too much, so usually just ONE or maybe TWO Keywords is all you should enter. If you want/need to enter more, go into Advanced Search OR duck out to Google or your Search Engine of choice; enter your search string; and add 'site: spyderlovers.com' to the end - that often works better'n anything else. However, there is a fair bit of stuff to look thru, simply because there's a vast store of collected knowledge & experience here on the Forum, so sometimes it just takes a little bit of reading to find the answer amongst the results.

Hope that helps, but if you are getting an error message instead of any results, please PM me or any of the other Moderators (look for the GREEN usernames ) with the Error Msg Details so that we can try to get it sorted.

[JP58]

I have an 2018 F3L. Mine wouldn't shift at times and had to have the left handle bar shift control replaced. Is a know problem with 18 and newer spyders. I heard they got a new supplier for shift module in 2018 and many have gone bad.

[billybovine]

There is a TSB issued by BRP for this issue. Specific to the 2018 model year. I had this problem on my 2018 F3L this spring. Dealer install a new left handlebar multifunction control.

[Paula]

What does TSB stand for.

[ARtraveler]

What does TSB stand for.

I am thinking Technical Service Bulletin.