What about that wonderful CLUNK and lurch forward after jamming a cold bike into first gear from a neutral start (clutch disengaged of course)? What exact mechanical stresses are at work here? Cannot be good for the drive belt or trans innards. I always park in gear and start with bike in gear with clutch depressed as taught in MSF course. Yeah, there will be clutch drag but so what? I always wait for lights in gear, watching in mirrors in case some doosh coming from the rear maybe doesn't see me, so I can escape and evade. Call me a freak, but unless you screwed with the motor and changed something, that starter is plenty robust to start the bike in gear.
Prior to the middle of model year 1984, Big Twin’s used a dry clutch that didn’t support starting in gear, or even running in gear on the jiffy stand with the clutch disengaged.
Unlike the various clutch assemblies used since then, the shell of the dry clutch was allowed to move laterally, from side to side, along the bearing surface of the clutch hub. The only thing keeping the clutch shell on the hub was the clutch plates themselves, and of course the front chain.
On any Big Twin built from 1965 through mid ’84, if you engaged the electric starter while the clutch was disengaged, the starter ring gear, attached to the clutch shell, would move away from the starter drive, sometimes resulting in damage to the ring gear and starter drive. You never wanted to do this with the early laminated ring gear.
If your engine was running in gear, with the clutch disengaged, and you set the machine down on the jiffy stand, the clutch shell would move down the clutch hub and stop against the clutch plates, placing some tension on the clutch pack. If the clutch was getting oily and becoming somewhat sticky, you would pause, maybe just a little before doing that again.
The thought of actually starting a dry clutch Big Twin in gear and on the jiffy stand was something that you didn’t do more than a few times. These clutches didn’t disengage that well under ideal conditions, and when they became oily, which was most of the time, since they were running uncovered in a housing lubricated by an oil mist, the engagement was often somewhat harsh.
The Sportster clutches from ’1971 through mid 1984 also had an aggressive personality. The first time that you dropped one of these machines into gear in the morning, it would “chirp” the tire on your garage floor. After the clutch and transmission fluid warmed up, everything was fine. The experience was often so abrupt that it was sometimes referred to as “morning sickness”.
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Topic: Starting bike in Neutral (Read 13133 times)