I was on the highway, about 50 miles out of San Antonio and pulled off the ramp.  When I downshifted, all of a sudden it felt like the gears were shifting real easy, too easy.  I pulled in the gas station and ckecked for something unusual, like oil all over the place, or anything!  I desided to head home.  As I pulled of, onto MY exit....again shifting real easy.  After the stop light, I took off and it started slippin' out of all the gears, with even 1/3rd throttle.  I babied it home, about a half mile.

After considering what had occurred,  reading through the forum and the Honda manual, I felt like there might be some other reason it was slipping out of gear than the standard "bent fork" or "rounded dog".

I removed the gear-shifter case (right).

Circled on the left, you can see the other end of the part (a spring) in my fingers, which of course hooks in the groove right circle.  It, I found inside the shifter-case after removal.

I'm hoping like hell this will solve the problem.  I think so, but I'll let everyone know.  I can buy this spring through the parts fish at powersportspro.com (linked on my sohc front page), for $3.03.  No telling what the shipping is, I'll check the local dealer first.

I couldn't get the replacement spring in time to go on a weekend ride so I decided to make one.  I went to the local hobby shop and bought .076 "music wire" and fashioned one.  You see my first three attempts and the broken one at right.  It took 5 attempts to get one that would fit in with all the other parts in place (not shown).  It worked great.

My bike has always been a bit difficult to shift and without the proper care between 1st and 2nd gears, it'd bounce off the dogs between those two gears in particular and was IMPOSSIBLE to get into neutral with the engine running.  All recommendations and suggestions were rounded dogs, bad shifting forks, clutch adjustment and too high idle.  This thing is now easy to shift and goes into neutral with out any problem.  I can't say if it's because the spring I made is a tad softer; or because the original was bad all along till it finally broke; or because the drum stopper control arm was some how slightly out of place.  I've seen many posts on the sohc4 forum about this very problem and I have to wonder if I've stumbled across something RIGHT FOR A CHANGE.

Left - You see my "home  made" spring in place.  After spending some time riding, I decided the shifting was a little too easy.  It would, if you weren't real careful shift through a gear - sort'a, that's the closest way I can describe it. 

I feel, with time, I might've gotten used to the very gentle touch it took to shift it properly, but considering the age of the bike, I felt I didn't want to risk the experiment.  So I replaced it with a stock spring.  Below......