My late '84 has a needle sleeve. It does not have a zerk/grease nipple.
In a rare fit of tinkering for tinkering's sake earlier this year I took apart the whole gear linkage to see if I could reduce what seemed to be excessive movement of the type Ben describes.
I installed a new needle sleeve, cleaned/greased everything else, and installed some faucet packing between each shift lever and the spherical bearings on the linkage to help keep dirt out/things lubricated.
I measured the defection at the toe of the shift lever before and after. 8mm before. 6mm after. By comparison, the same measurement on my ’94 R100RT, which has the same set up, is less than 2mm.
I think most of the movement on my R65 comes from the end play of the shift lever on its mounting bolt/screw. I did not replace the mounting bolt/screw as it did not seem to be worn, but this would be an obvious thing to try. Before I do that, I’ll insert a thin shortening shim/washer under the mounting bolt/screw head as I think this could well make the world of difference. Has anyone else taken this route?
