Talk:Suicide clutch

I think it should be noted that the term "suicide shifter" is inaccurate, there's no such thing as a suicide shifter. A suicide clutch is called that for obvious reasons but fools using the suicide shifter term are only being trendy dicks, there is NO logical reason for it

January 2007
What is up with this article? It makes the suicide shift sound like it is an obsucure piece of hardware when a great deal of pan-heads came as suicide shifts. I mean I love that someone had a knowledge of them and decided to put some of it here, but this article sounds more like a safety DON'T than an explanation of the device or the people who love it.


 * Then feel free to give it a going-over :) --Hooperbloob 15:34, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Not to mention that a suicide shifter is traditionally not a hand shifter. A hand shifter is traditionally known as a jockey, tank, or police shifter depending on where it is mounted. "Suicide shifter" is a term that evolved out of the "suicide clutch." A suicide clutch is just a foot operated clutch that was popular during the days when bikes only had one foot-operated, rear brake. Supposedly stopping such a bike on an incline was suicidal due to the need to shift into neutral, support the bike with one foot, and eventually shift into first gear while quickly shifting foot support or balancing on two wheels at a standstill.


 * I'm assuming that as motorcycle speeds increased through the decades (and foot clutches became obscure), so did the danger of not keeping both hands on the handle bar. Therefore many people today associate the jockey shift with suicide shifting, which is the bastard child of the suicide clutch and regarded by many in the motorcycle industry as not truly existing (i.e. there is no such thing as a suicide shifter). LostCause 16:24, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Support 1
 * Support 2

Strike three. There is no such thing as a "suicide shifter". Only people who don't know better. The suicide clutch came from the old hand shift motorcycles that utilized a rocker clutch. The rocker clutch could be engaged and would hold itself with the clutch disengaged or with the other end, slowly let the clutch out for normal driving. If a person took the mechanizim out that would safely hold the clutch disengaged, it was said to be suicide. Hence suicide clutch.b —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.160.219.78 (talk) 23:03, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * This is exactly correct. I've been driving motorcyles since the early 1960's, and "suicide" referred to a setup with a foot operated clutch and no hand brake lever (for the front brake). Stopping while facing downhill or level ground wasn't a problem, but stopping while facing uphill required constant slippage of the clutch, backing the rear tire onto the curb on the side, or being so talented that a driver could balance the bike with the right foot on the brake and quickly apply the left foot to the clutch, shift in to first gear and take off before falling over, or rolling back too far. The main reason this setup was somewhat popular for choppers is that it meant the front handlebars had no levers, making for a "cleaner" look. If the throttle cable was routed through the handlebar, then there would be no visible cable either. Some sort of auto releasing parking brake for the rear brake would have solved the problem, but I never saw one implemented. Another alternative could have been a second cable attached to the throttle handle so when turned away past the idle point, it would operate the rear brake enough to hold the bike in place while facing uphill, again I never saw this implemented either. Yet another alternative woudl be a heel operated rear brake on the left that could be used while the ball of the foot was used to operate the clutch on the left, leaving the right foot free to balance the bike when stopping and facing uphill. Rcgldr (talk) 20:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal
Having separate pages for both Suicide shifter and Jockey shifter is obviously silly. They are variant terms for the same thing, with some but not all sources using the terms "suicide clutch" (the foot control) in combination or contrast to "jockey shifter" (the hand operated gear selector), while other sources gloss over the difference. Hence the need to elaborate on a single page, as with Non-flammable and Flammable, etc. Google says "suicide shifter" is about four times more common than "jockey shifter" and about twice as common as "suicide clutch", so the merge target needs to be Suicide shifter as per WP:COMMONNAME. --Dbratland (talk) 20:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Suicide Clutch Article Proposal
Currently, there are two articles about hand operated shifters - the Jockey Shifter article and the Suicide Shifter article. Both cover basically the same thing, with heavy references to the Suicide Clutch. Since all those above seem to agree that:


 * 1) There is no such thing as a suicide shifter
 * 2) A suicide clutch is an interesting variant of foot-operated motorcycle clutch

then there should be one article for hand operated motorbike gear shifters and one article for foot-operated clutches, including suicide clutches.

If everyone agrees, I would be happy to make the changes by cobbling together the info in the current articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nighthawk (talk • contribs) 09:40, 15 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and moved Suicide shifter to Suicide clutch, and merged in Jockey shifter. I didn't delete anything yet, but it does need to have all of the unsourced material deleted. There are a lot of sources listed at the bottom that could be used to add inline citations. I think it's pedantic to say there is no such thing as a suicide shifter -- some people just use the term when they mean a suicide clutch. They're not wrong; it's just a term that is kind of vague. Note that all of the opinions above saying the term doesn't exist fail to cite actual sources. If you can find a real source -- not some blogger or forum commenter -- who says the term is wrong, great, but if not, then it's merely some editor's opinion.Regardless of all that, please go ahead and clean up the article. I'm sure you can improve it quite a bit. --Dbratland (talk) 17:51, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

February 2014
It is often incorrect to call a lot of early foot clutches suicide clutches. They weren't. Ever. No one was stupid enough to manufacture a bike that would kill you in the first block out of the shop. Riders had to modify them incorrectly to do that. Mostly for racing. There were two types of foot clutches on the Indians in particular, the inline 4fours has a toe lock at full depression that would keep the clutch locked in against spring pull tension. Tapping the small toe lock next to the foot clutch lever end would release it and your foot pressure would hold it down or let it out. It was not a strong spring. Very similar to a car foot clutch, only with a lock on it next to the floor board to hold it there, while you rested your foot, or put it on the ground for balance on the bike. This was a difficult feat when going up hill around a left hand corner if you lost your balance and had to put your left foot down. The spring would pull the clutch the rest of the way out. The simplist save, besides hitting the brakes and stalling the bike, was to grab the hand shifter and pop it into neutral, even with the clutch out. You weren't shoving into a gear but out of a gear.

Hand shifting is wonderful. Unlike modern motorcycle transmissions, you do not have to go down through the gears one at a time while approaching a stop light, then after bottoming out in 1st pop it back up into a finicky neutral between 1st and second, with your foot. Motorcycle hand shifting is just like a car. Three in a row though, with neutral between 1st and 2nd. You simply shove the shift lever directly into neutral from any gear at a stop sign, clutch or no clutch !!! On other Indian models (that had more than a 1 speed transmission) every clutch had a friction plate on it up at the clutch lever frame attachment. Harley did too. You could tighten the plate, and the clutch would stay in any position you put it in, at any time. Often on my 1946 Chief, on a hill I will set the throttle (there was very little if any spring return on most Indian throttles). I can put the throttle at 1/4, slip the clutch until the bike would hold itself with the engine running on a hill at a stop sign, and take hands and feet off the controls, with feet on the ground. The bike would easily hold it's position. A suicide type clutch could not ever do this. Slipping the clutch gradually as I take off up hill and to the left, if I lose my balance I can put my foot on the ground without the clutch popping all the way out. Usually it slips enough, that you can literally hold the bike still, putting both feet on the ground and pulling back on the handle bars and holding the tiny front brake, then letting up and taking off slowly again. Then ease the clutch the rest of the way out to drive off. It is actually a brilliant concept for the times. The front brake on all the old bikes was not used much to stop the bike. They were too small, usually 1" wide brake drum. They were mostly to keep you from rolling backward down a hill. Front brake stopping that is popular now, was rarely used in the old days, even if it was strong enough to slow you down.

Indian clutches are legendary in toughness. Instead of changing the front gearing for parades (you can not change the size of an Indian rear sprocket), Police and parade riders would often just slip the clutch to ride slow for the entire parade, the friction plates would be tightened a little more so the bike would ride 1 mile an hour during the entire parade with the idle speed screw in a bit to keep your hand off the throttle if need be. Then back to business afterwards. I personally have never seen a burned up Indian clutch with any kind of riding. It would take a lot of hard racing or hill climbs to smoke one. They were wet clutches, sharing oil with the transmission, and primary chain, but did not share oil with the engine (like modern motorcycles). The jocky shifter was popular for Police on Indians, 4ours and Twins. It could be either right or left side depending whether the department specified right or left throttle. Indian and Harley could put the throttle and the opposite side, including moving the spark advance for the distributor timing on either end of the handlebars. In the earliest days there were no standards and they tried to make motorcycles like cars. Left foot clutch pedal, right hand tank shifter, and that meant a left hand throttle. No one knew that was incorrect, and didn't care. Or they could set up a left hand tank shifter and right hand throttle. Foot Clutch was always on the left, foot brake on the right and the hand brake for the front wheel was on the right, but it could be moved to be with the throttle if desired, or not.

Jocky shifters had one advantage, it was faster, more sure shifting, and a shorter throw. The linkage in tank shifting would get sloppy and have large range of motion after a while, but was adjustable and could be on the right or left. On Indians the jocky shifter was easy to install and use directly from the top of the transmission to use on the right or the left. The disadvantages were, that often it worked better behind the riders leg. If you bumped it with the back of your leg while putting your foot down on the ground, or your passenger bumped it, you could knock it out of gear, or worse, knock it into gear while sitting at a stop!! There were ways to bend it forward under your leg and in front of your leg, but got a bit ungainly the longer the shifter rod. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.91.57.160 (talk • contribs) 23:51, 27 February 2014‎

Front brake
So some guy claims that it's not a suicide clutch if you have a front brake, but I found several examples of authors like Alan Girdler and Dave Edwards using the term on bikes that have not had the front brake removed, such as Edwards's "8-ball" Indian Scout Bob Job that appeared in The Art of the Motorcycle. I can see how if you have a foot clutch that doesn't latch and then go and remove the front brake you're going to make a bad situation even worse, but that doesn't mean removing the front brake is necessary to have one, according to many sources. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:10, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
This nightmare article only keeps getting worse. It needs a complete rewrite, working strictly from verifiable sources. Lots of source material exists, but most of the contents now are just some anonymous guy on a soapbox rambling on about stuff he remembers from 40 years ago. Needs lots of work. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:14, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Six years later it seems clear that nothing has changed here. The majority of the article is written in a style that makes it obvious it's personal opinion with nothing to back it up. I agree, nuke it and start over. TooManyFingers (talk) 05:45, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Conversions?
One thing I did not see discussed (and it will surely be booed by the real manly bikers I am sure) is any efforts that were made in converting so-called suicide clutch bikes to the newer arrangement (i.e., a handle-bar clutch lever). Perhaps none were ever done though it seems like someone would have liked to avoid the issues mentioned throughout the existing article. And for the record, I never owned an Indian or a Harley. I learned to ride on a Honda CB750, and later owned a Hodaka Rat and a Honda CB350F. I wouldn't mind owning an Indian but, like everything else fun, they've been priced out of my league. C'est la vie. JimScott (talk) 21:04, 4 June 2020 (UTC)