In a motorcycle, why is the neutral position typically above the first gear and below the second?
In: 1946
First gear is the most important. This makes getting there as fast as possible. You have time to hunt for neutral.
This pattern (6-5-4-3-2-neutral-1) keeps the bike in gear at all times until you purposely put it into neutral with a half click up from first.
If the neutral position was at the bottom position (6-5-4-3-2-1-neutral) you would need to shift out of neutral every time you stop or slow down to be sure you are in first gear.
The way I learned to ride was in gear until there are cars stopped behind you. Then you can shift into neutral
Safety. Putting neutral between 1 and 2 makes it a loss less likely you put the engine into neutral unintentionally in a dangerous situation.
Motorcycles often use engine braking to slow down. If you down shift from 2nd to 1st, and release the clutch the resistance of the motor will slow you down. If neutral was at the bottom and you miscounted your down shifts you could accidentally end up in neutral. Releasing the clutch in neutral does not slow you down. expecting the engine to slow you down and it doesn’t could cause an accident.
Another reason is downshifting to get a lower gear for more power to accelerate out of trouble and finding yourself in neutral at the bottom because of miscounted gears could also cause an accident.
There are a huge number of motorcycles made where neutral is below first.
It is a pattern that was developed for racing to ensure that you didn’t inadvertently select neutral while downshifting rapidly. Getting a neutral when you didn’t expect it isn’t good on a motorcycle. It also made it easy to find first from neutral. It’s the only gear that is down from that position.
On a motorcycle you use the gears to decelerate, but rarely first gear. I figure it’s so you can go directly from second to neutral when stopping without passing through first.
A lot of 60s-70s kawasaki dirtbikes had neutral as all the way down. Owned one after years or riding normal shift pattern bikes. Was tip over city when riding trails. It was too easy to hit neutral when you wanted first for hills or low speed corners.
A bike needs to have some speed to not topple over. First gear is the safest gear to handle slow speeds without stalling the engine.
So when both starting up and slowing down finding 1st is pretty important. Since it’s the bottom gear, you can simply keep kicking down a gear until you find the lowest one.
As you gain speed the bike stabilises itself. At that point a firm press takes you from first to second – skipping neutral.
It’s actually quite hard to accidentally engage neutral, and that’s perfect for always being able to power the wheel.
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This does not mean 1N234… is the only way, it’s just one way that mechanically easy to implement and least likely to go wrong in the scenarios considered.
So it was made the standard.
This is so wild to me. I ride an incredibly basic Indian-built bike (Bajaj Boxer lol) and it’s just a simple neutral-1-2-3-4 system where you go up and down like a car. I’m not actually sure I could use any different gear configuration at this point, which is upsetting because I was hoping to get a 250cc Yamaha dirt bike, but presumably that’s using the more advanced gearing?
It’s also if you forget what gear you’re in you can go all the way down and you know you’ll be in first. Most bikes are 1 down 5 up
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