Roll in first gear about 4 to 5 inches, second gear about half that. Some of that is chain slack. I checked three bikes all were the same(ish). And that translates to an easy 20 degrees in first at the countershaft sprocket, again about half that in second and slightly less each gear up from there. All of that seems normal to most bikes I have owned, of any brand age. It's the nature of a constant mesh transmission. The engineers need to provide enough room for the dogs to slide into the slots as they go by or you would get constant missed shifts. Rumor has it that Honda purposely cut the slots extra long on the Shadow 1100's to make that tranny more "Harley like". IE clunky. They achieved their goal, a "clunkless" 1st 2nd shift on the 1100 shadows is an art not a given. There have been several tales of the slot length getting changed back and forth in bike trannys as riders first complain of clunking then of missed shifts.
We got lucky in that our bikes don't have Yamaha's notorious bent 2nd gear shift fork disease. Several other oriental makers had similar issues. I can only guess they use a common transmission gear set manufacturer.
