MY 450ES WILL NOT SHIFT OUT OF 5TH GEAR IF DRIVEN MORE THAN A FEW MILES AT HIGH SPEEDS. I HAVE TO TURN THE KEY ON AND OFF TO RESET SHIFTING.
DOES ANYONE KNOW THE FIX? THANKS.

 

A few questions for you. How many miles are on it? Does this happen everytime? What year is it? If it is new it may just need to be broke in and you should try not to run it for very long at top speed. I have had mine for 27 months now and this has only happened to me about twice and it was in the first 500miles. I now have about 5000miles on it and it works great other than the battery drain problem I am still waiting to get fixed. I must say though my battery went totally dead after sitting about 1 month not used and I was totally impressed how the system worked with no battery power. After about 70miles the battery charged up to snuff again. Also for other problems people have the posts you read before I wrote about the clutch adjustment are the best advice available for most problems shifting electric shift quads and it stands to reason that the closer the tolerances the more power required to shift. I don't think this is your problem though unless your ES won't shift under power. Sorry for rambling but just answer these few questions and maybe we can figure this out because I have heard of other people with this same problem and I think it is probably an easy fix.

 

ITS A 2000 AND IT HAS 2100 MILES. THE PROBLEM IS WHEN TRAVELING A FEW MILES AT HIGH SPEEDS IT LOCKS OUT THE SHIFTING UNTIL COMPUTER IS RESET.
THIS IS THE ONLY SYMPTOM. WORKS FINE AND ALL SERVICE MANUAL TROUBLESHOOTING SHOWS NO PROBLEM!
ANYWAY, THANKS FOR THE HELP.

 

Did you ever get your shifting problem solved? A very similar event happened to me last weekend. This is the first problem with my 2000 Foreman 450ES which has about 700 miles.

Thanks for any help.

 

Been in deep water lately?? I had the same problem on my Rancher a couple weeks ago when I was playing in the creek. It happened the day after I was in the water, I took off and after cruising along in 5th for a while it wouldn't shift back down. I could turn the key off and back on and it would shift again only to do the same thing after getting back up to speed in 5th gear. I took the sensor off the front of the engine case (the Foreman's may be in another location, I'm not sure)and cleaned it and put dielectrical grease in the connection and it fixed my shifting problems. If you have been in water you may want to try this. Good luck!

Ranch0rider

 

I beleive this is to insure that you don't shift down at high rate of speed. My 450 has 9000kms and has happened 2 times in that period. It is just protecting you and your quad from damage. It could also be caused by an overload of electricity from the stator that causes this to kick the little breaker of sorts so it doesn't overload the circuitry if you had tried to shift down from high speed. In my 2 cases it happenned in the 1st 3000kms and has never happened since. Just a thought.

98 Honda 450 ES
99 Honda 400 EX