SE5 stuck in high gear

[gseely]

Has anyone experienced problems with the SE5 not downshifting?
There may be some user error involved with this because I was teaching my wife to drive the SE5, and was sitting behind her.
I noticed that while she was sitting at a stop sign, the engine was spinning at high RPM, and she was in 5th gear. I didn't get a good look at the tach, but it was running a heckuva lot higher than idle.
I thought she had the throttle turned up high, and her foot on the brake, so I reached forward to take her hand off the throttle. The engine, of course, died.
I took over, started the Spyder up, and downshifted. Once I got into the proper gear and upshifted, it seemed to downshift automatically just fine.
I think she might have been riding her brake pedal, but I'm not sure.
I guess this is a long-winded way of asking if I should be concerned about a problem with the Spyder or if I should write it off to user error.
Thanks for your help.

 

[ARtraveler]

Stuck in high gear

I would attribute it to operator error for the first go around. If the problem persists then I would have it looked at. I had the same problems when my wife was learning to drive the Spyder. After the 500 miles or so learning curve--we had no such glitches. Now if I could just get her to pay more attention to over applying the parking brake--we would be just fine.

 

[SpyderWolf]

When my wife first started ryding my Spyder, she had an issue where it would not shift out of second gear for her. I never experienced the problem myself; however, when I took it to the dealer for my routine service I told them about it. It turned out that my Gear Positioning Sensor (GPS) had thrown a code, and they replaced it for me. To this day I have never experienced a shifting problem.

The SE5 should downshift automatically when the RPMs get below 2500. If she was ryding the brake and keeping the throttle cracked then it is quite possible the RPMs stayed above 2500 so no automatic downshifting occured. So, with the high revs that you mentioned it may have been operator error this time.

Best of luck with it.

Of course, I hope you know the road you are heading down by teaching your wife how to ryde it, as you may very well become another member of the multiple Spyder family club.

 

[bone crusher]

I think many had this issue when the SE5s first came out...there is a fix for it...many here have gone through with it and I don't think there's an issue anymore...look around the threads, you'll find all the info you need...

 

[ddileo]

Yes

Has anyone experienced problems with the SE5 not downshifting?
There may be some user error involved with this because I was teaching my wife to drive the SE5, and was sitting behind her.
I noticed that while she was sitting at a stop sign, the engine was spinning at high RPM, and she was in 5th gear. I didn't get a good look at the tach, but it was running a heckuva lot higher than idle.
I thought she had the throttle turned up high, and her foot on the brake, so I reached forward to take her hand off the throttle. The engine, of course, died.
I took over, started the Spyder up, and downshifted. Once I got into the proper gear and upshifted, it seemed to downshift automatically just fine.
I think she might have been riding her brake pedal, but I'm not sure.
I guess this is a long-winded way of asking if I should be concerned about a problem with the Spyder or if I should write it off to user error.
Thanks for your help.

Yes See thread:

http://www.spyderlovers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17327