Motorcycle Repair: honda shadow 700, v65 sabre, transmission gears

Question
hi. my question is i'm thinking of buying a 1984 honda shadow 700 and the seller tells me it has a oil leak somwhere and i was wondering where to check for that. also another question is the seller told me when driving the bike it sometimes goes out of gear and he just puts it back in so i was wondering what could be the problem and how and if i can fix it.

Answer
Sorry Justin, we lost our Internet access when the tower was struck by lightning during the storm in central IL last week. The oil leak can come from a number of places.  I wouldn't be too worried about that. It will be either a seal on one of the output shafts or one of the top cover gaskets that often hardens up due to heat.

However, the jumping out of gear is another issue.  That's, typically, caused by bent shift forks and it requires pulling the engine, slitting the cases and replacing a number of transmission gears, shift drum and shift forks.  It can be very expensive unless you are doing the work yourself.  I just fixed a similar problem on a 1985 V65 sabre and it cost me over $150 in gaskets.  I had an extra motor I was able to get the gears out of.