I’m new to the motorcycle game, but have been wondering. Why is the transmission configured as follows;
5
4
3
2
N
1?
As was told to me ages ago, they did it that way so you could tap the lever down several times and know you’re in first and able to start off.
Of course, they could have put neutral at the bottom, and made you tap down a few times, then up once to find first. I don’t know that’s any better or worse than having to remember to tap up twice to go from first to second, but it’s been that way for decades, and anyone who dares mess with the arrangement will drive <heh!> a lot of people utterly mad.
Now I had a guy at work tell me it’s 1 tap upwards to go from 1st to 2nd, and half a tap upwards to go from 1st to neutral.
That’s more like it. You can go straight from first to second without stopping at the in-between neutral if you want.
That is how it worked on all the motorcycles I owned. There was no double tap to go from 1st to 2nd. It was a little tricky to get into neutral some times you put the bike in 2nd and you had to try again but as with most things in life I tended to get better with practice.
It would be difficult to have an H-pattern (like in a car) on a bike. I know that some early bikes had a ‘suicide shifter’, which was a lever that came up alongside the tank; but I don’t know thier pattern. Anyway, linear shifting is easier/safer on a motorcycle.
Why is it ‘one down, five up’? I can only guess. I think that one would want the lowest gear in the lowest position. I’m guessing because it’s easier to downshift by shifting in a downward direction in case one needs to downshift quickly. (And anyway, you’re downshifting, right?) If neutral were all the way at the bottom, one could shift into it right when they needed to be in first. But neutral has to be somewhere, so why not put it between first and second?
Not true of all transmissions, but in many cases a collar slides on a shaft from first, through neutral, then to second. This is activated by a cam. The cam would have to be considerably more complex to place neutral at the end…of course the 3-4 and 5-6 cams have exactly that shape, so it is not imposssible.
Another thought: When you come up to a stop sign, you need to downshift to first, not neutral as you stop…having neutral be a soft click between second and first means one less motion to get into first.
Race prepped sport bikes go in the exact opposite order-they are 1 up and then the rest down. Many aftermarket rear sets for street bikes can be used to set your bike up this way as well by simply flipping around the linkage to the gearbox. It is unbelievably smoother to simply tap the shifter down to change gears when you are under hard acceleration than it is to hook your foot under and then pull up, and then place your foot back on top. In addition, when you are at extreme lean angles, if you need to downshift, it’s less upsetting to the bike to lightly tap up on the shifter than to tap it down (which also might cause it to drag).
As to why it is in between, I wonder if it has something to do with not being able to accidentally put it into neutral? You really don’t coast in neutral, to disengage the engine you just pull in the clutch. Neutral is for when the bike is sitting. Perhaps they designers didn’t want anyone accidentally getting all the way down in neutral and then needing to find a gear but not having it?
As just to throw in a bit of confusion 
Most bikes designed for farmers here (both 2 and 4 wheel) have N at the bottom. The reason is because the rider is often wearing heavy wet boots covered with mud (so less “feel” with the toes), and also needs to get off the bike often and in a hurry. Although, I would of thought that with the advent of ATVs with their centrifugal clutch would of done away with the need to have N at the bottom of the shift pattern.
Of course having bikes with both patterns did lead to confusion, many a time I’d be starting to head down a semi vertical rutted hill, click down to what I’d thought was going to be 1st so I could rely on a bit of engine braking, and discover I’d gone into neutral instead :smack:
1949 Harley tank shift on a 80 cu flathead was 1st all the way aft on the bracket, Neutral was in between 1st and 2nd, then on forward to 3rd and finally 4th.
It was stepped notches so you could bang into the stop for faster shifting. Generally you could not have 1st and 2nd both right into the stop so I always set it so I could ‘bang’ 2nd and would have to ‘fish’ for 1st. I usually had more time to do that at a light and then all the up shifts were into a stop and no fishing needed.
The trick was to either make sure you had the rocker ‘foot’ clutch set so it would hold disengaged or make sure which way you were going to lean when you pulled up to a stop point.
Trusting a rocker clutch to hold ‘disengaged’, no matter how it is set, is a foolish thing to do.
YMMV
IIRC, most ‘Servi Cars’ ( Meter Maid Wagon - 3 wheeler) were 3 speeds with a reverse.
IIRC the 2nd, Some old Brit stuff was upside down ( 1st at the top ) like the race bike description posted up thread.
Had to pay attention when you went from right brake-left shift to the ‘Britt’ right shift-left brake. Your normal reactions could get you killed.
Suicide shifters are still used. I see them occasionally on American Chopper and those biker build off shows on Discovery. I don’t know if any production bikes use one, but the guys at OCC, etc. aren’t custom fabricating the things (except maybe the handle). There’s got to be someone out there making them, even if they are only for custom bikes.
Couldn’t you just have the shifter attatched to the transmission like it is now? I don’t see why there would have to be a different anything except lever. All you would have to do is turn the foot shifter up by 90 degrees or so and make the handle longer and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.
Now you’re going to make me wonder if the Discovery building up the street still has the bikes on display. I think the last one I saw had a suicide shifter and I could take a look.
Modern suicide shifters are attached directly to a modern transmission; the shift mechanism in the transmission is the same as it is for foot shift bikes and rachets the shift drum from position to position. The tank shifts from older bikes (pre-1950 or so) directly moved the shift drum inside the transmission.
You guys are making this all too hard.
The stick you use is just that, not a ‘suicide’ thing at all.
A rocker clutch is not a ‘suicide’ clutch.
A ‘suicide’ clutch is one that works like in a car, you take your foot off it and it engages. Usually a lever on the left that is directly linked to the clutch and must be held down with the foot while stopped. That is why they are called suicide, you put that foot on the ground and your bike lunges into the traffic.
You can have a ‘suicide’ rig with a tank shift, or a ‘hand slapper’ (all the pretty things that stick up beside the rider that connect directly to the transmission to the ‘rachet top’ part of the transmission. (skulls, shotgun tubes, beer taps, chrome knobs, etc.)
A loose rocker clutch that does not hold dis-engaged is considered a ‘suicide’. A hand clutch like on 99% of all bikes is a ‘suicide’ in that you must keep holding it or be in neutral.
The media misconception that a ‘hand slapper’ = 'suicide ’ is just that. Media misconception.
In the ‘jargon’, a simple foot lever that must be held along with a ‘hand slapper’ used to shift is what most mean when they talk about a ‘suicide’ rig or bike.