Rocco wrote on 05/25/09 at 10:23:19:i saw a rat bike the other day and it had no clutch on the handle bars but a gear shifter from a car down below?
i heard an older guy say "they don't call it a dead man's clutch for nothing!"
is that really really old school? how does it work? i'm very intrigued by the whole thing!
the earliest bikes with gears had hand shift, foot clutch... the clutches come in 2 varieties, "suicide", and "rocker"... the "suicide" variety is basically the same as your handclutch, it self applies the clutch from the de-clutch position(if your foot slips off at a light with the trans in first, the bike jumps... that's where the "suicide" comes from)... the "rocker" takes a deliberate action to make it clutch... think of a "toe-heel shifter" rig on a dresser with floorboards... pressure to the "toe" lever end de-clutches the bike. then one slowly applies pressure to the "heel" lever, and the clutch engages... the clutch and levers have a neutral mechanical advantage by design, so if you have the bike de-clutched, and your foot slips off the lever, the clutch remains de-clutched... no jump into the intersection.... in the early 70s the fed hiway safety boys, and DOT decided that americans were too lame to handle differences in shift configs, so every bike sold as new here had to have left foot shifting, left hand clutching(it also allows both hands to remain on the bars during a shift, and you to use both feet at a light for balance)... that rule only applies to OEM, not the owner, so you can change to foot clutch if you like... check out left side pics of old harleys, and you'll see the shifter up on the tank... "seat of the pants" shifters were just a simplification of the shift mechanism, eliminating a few moving parts, and a few pounds of weight... it offers no real advantage, and a few disadvantages....