Honda Goldwing Gear Change Clunking Noise

Got a Honda motorcycle that makes clunking noises from the gearbox when you change gears? Maybe you're using the wrong kind of engine oil and it's time to do an oil change.

Partzilla's resident Honda motorcycle expert John Talley does Q&A livestreams on our YouTube channel every Friday at 3pm Eastern. In this edition, John was asked what could be causing clunking noises from the gearbox of a Honda Goldwing GL1800 when changing gears. 

Honda Motorcycle Gearbox Clunking

I have a 2002 Honda Goldwing GL1800 and the gearbox is making a clunking sound when I change gears. Any thoughts?

John Talley: Alright, is it making clunking sounds just when you’re changing gears? Let’s start off with something simple. I had an 07 VTX1300 that I bought used. When I first got it, it shifted like crap. I mean, it was just really notchy and every gear change was rough. And I thought I would have to go in and rebuild this stupid transmission because somebody was obviously really hard on this machine and did it dirty. Well it turns out they were using an oil that I don’t want to mention, but it wasn’t what I preferred. And just for the heck of it, I changed it over to the oil that I like to use, which is that gold HP oil from Honda Performance fluids. After the second change, all those noises went away. So before you go diving into the gearbox of that GL 1800, which is not fun to drop out the engine, go through a couple of oil changes with that HP4 semi-synthetic oil in the gold bottle and see what that does. I mean come on, that’s 15 or 20 dollars of oil and it’s worth a shot. It worked for me and I kept the bike for another three years and never once had to open up the cases on the thing. 

Watch the video below to see how to change the oil in a Honda Goldwing GL1800 motorcycle

Want to see more live repair questions answered? See more motorcycle and ATV repair questions answered here.