Why are motorcycle transmissions designed with first gear down and the rest up so that you pass neutral going from first to second and when downshifting from second to first?

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Is there something inherently beneficial in this design or is it more of a holdover from old designs?

In: Engineering

8 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s a convention now, and bike riders expect it. Some companies did it originally because there were no synchos on first gear. You almost had to be stopped to engage it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s easy to lose track of what gear you’re in, so when you come to a stop you just keep mashing the shifter down until it won’t go any more. Then you know you’re in first.

It would also be dangerous to put neutral in the bottom-most position, because again, if you lose track of what gear you’re in, you can end up in neutral when you really need to be in gear (such as a vehicle approaching from behind about to rear-end you).

It’s also important to note that neutral is a half-step. So shifting up form 1 to 2 is easy if you use the full travel of the shifter. You have to deliberately make a half-shift to get from 1 or 2 to neutral*.

* Kawasaki transmissions have a Positive Neutral Finder, when you are stopped you can do a full upshift and it will lock you into neutral and not let you go into 2.

Anonymous 0 Comments

So that if you are shifting down, relying on engine braking, you don’t suddenly find yourself in neutral.

Neutral at the bottom are not unheard of, but are not common.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Foot placement on the pegs while riding means it is easier to pull up to shift from 1 through to 6, neutral makes most sense near the lowest gear because that is where youd be traveling slowest, but if it was below 1 instead of between 1-2 you have the potential for accidentally going into neutral instead of 1 which is a bigger deal than accidentally going into neutral from 1-2.

Additionally you are stopped while in neutral typically so pressing down is more ergonomic than reaching under the lever to push up.

Anonymous 0 Comments

On all of my quads, which are older, Neutral is all the way down and then 5 gears up. I still get confused when I switch between them and a bike. Newer quads seem to all have auto transmissions or a button type shifter on the handlebars.

Anonymous 0 Comments

My first bike was all one direction. Up for going up. Down for down. All the way down was neutral.

Not all bikes have this shift pattern. There are quite a few different patterns on bikes from the 70-90s.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I didn’t see the reason as I understood it. Like a car, neutral is a rarely-used “gear.” It’s for starting (bike stopped), and for long waits at a light (bike stopped) so you can relax your hand. Otherwise you just want to walk up and down the gears and use the clutch. For this reason, neutral can’t be at the extremes. The next question is between which two gears should we hide the half-step to neutral? Of course it should be next to first gear – the one you use when you want to start up from a stop. So between 1 and 2 is the only logical place.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Some race/track bikes reverse the shift pattern so first is up, rest are down. Not all riders prefer this though, it’s easy enough to install a different linkage.

Some race transmissions have neutral all the way at the end of the shift pattern, below first, as it’s more critical to avoid a false neutral in this situation.

At this point for standard road bikes, left foot shifter 1 down 5 up is just convention like an H pattern gearbox.