late night reading and footshifts..

surfing around online and found this http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/20 ... ycle-gang/ new to mem, anyway, good reading for a tedious and over-long night in the middle of nowhere

One thing I had not realised before, is that looking closely at the bike in the "staged" Hollister picture, it is clearly fitted with one of those ratchet-shift conversions that were being discussed a little while ago


this one, as ever with old Harleys, appears to be a horse of a very different colour going by the same name http://venturamotorworks.wordpress.com/ ... shift-pan/ from what I can see, it is a ratchet semi-automatic shift-and-clutch actuated by a handlebar trigger. I'm far from clear how this bike would be ridden, from what I can see it is an up-shifter.. ieit changes up, as in drag racing; how you would ride this bike on the road, I'm unclear?


how many more of these things are there? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Z8l9QhPa6mg/T ... speed1.jpg this one also appears to be a semi-0auto clutch-and-shift, but using a pedal this time

You are referring to a Speed E Shift and the operation was by foot. The lever on the bars was to reverse the operation for downshifting.

no, there are three different mechanisms. The one on the Hollister bike ( with the big flat plate by the pedal ) is a straightforward ratchet arrangement. The recent thread covered considerable detail regarding the reconstruction of one.

The one with the complex scissors arrangement and handlebar trigger is a semi-automatic device linking clutch and gearchange. The trigger does indeed appear to be used to reverse the direction of shifting

the third one, as far as can be seen from the limited illustrations, appears to be a self-contained ratchet arrangement with a linkage to the clutch - ie push the pedal one way for up, the other way for down

I believe the one on the Hollister bike is made by vard and it only shifts the transmission gears, making an early bike a hand clutch and foot shifter. The others shift is changed by handle bar lever, up or down. The action of stepping down works the clutch and shifter from same pedal.If I could ever figure out how to post pictures on this site I would send 2 more articles on the speedee shifter, but after an hour I once again give up.

the Vard one is indeed a simple ratchet conversion, as you say. There is quite a lot about it in the recent thread about foot shifters as fitted to 45s, inclusing some links to youtube relating to the reconstruction of one. It may, or may not, be the usnit referred to as B&H, or the one may be a copy of the other; I believe they are essentially similar

I'd gathered that the Speed-e-Shift was a different issue. There's an article about them which has been posted here a couple of times.

The third one appears to be a different take on the theme of a linked clutch and gear-change, worked in this case by a single pedal which is moved up or down depending on which way you are shifting. It seems to be for drag racing which makes me suspect that the action my be quite abrupt.

Triumph had a cam-actuated version at one time called the slickshift, by which the clutch was partly linked to the gear pedal using a cam inside the gearbox. It actually works reasonably well but slows down the change and makes it heavier, so the people who would pay extra for a feature didn't want it and the people who might have appreciated it, didn't feel it was worth the extra complication. Jawa had a similar feature for a long while, but this was at a time when they were a general joke so we won't dwell on this!

The Hollister bike unit is made by B&H, not Vard. Vard made forks. The B-H was fairly popular and they show up regularly for sale. They used a mousetrap clutch booster that H-D is touted to have gotten their design from. The B&H was made for big twins and 45s. The Speedy-Shifter is on both the other examples. It is a simple in out pedal that shifts and releases the clutch simultaneously. The handlebar lever applies spring pressure to hold the shift rod up engaging the second set of stepped shift plates allowing downshifting. It shifted fast but was difficult to set up and hard on transmissions. There is no other means of disengaging the clutch or holding it other than with your foot on the pedal, in which case it is also in gear! The Lee clutch pedal was used with the Speedy-Shifter. I have about 2/3rds of a unit laying around here. They were never a production unit, just made in a home shop and are quite crude. There was another style shifter also which was a remote ratchet unit that mounted in place of the clutch pedal made by Thoro. It is reputed that H-D also used the basic design on their ratchet top, which looks suspiciously like a Thoro unit mounted on a habndshift top.
Robbie