ducati monster clutchless upshift

i've been using the clutch less and less in my daily riding. shifting up and down.
to upshift, get to whatever revs you think are appropriate to get to the next gear. apply a bit of pressure onto the gear shift lever in direction of next uppper gear. quickly back-off the throttle about a 1/4 to 1/2 turn and you'll feel the shift lever snick into the next gear position. quickly get back on the gas to the same position you were in before and the bike will accellerate smoothly. it'll feel kinda jerky initially but if you can do this all in a fluid progress, it'll feel buttery smooth rowing up the gears!

downshifting (this seemed SO unnatural to me until i tried it), while in lower revs, apply a bit of pressure onto the gear shift lever in direction of lower gear. quickly give the throttle a 1/4 - 1/2 turn MORE gas and you'll feel the lever snick into the next lower gear. keep the throttle consistent so that the revs match the wheel speed.

in both cases, when you apply pressure on the lever, keep it consistent and firm. if you're wishy-washy with the pressure you put on the lever through the process, you'll likely wind up between gears in a "false neutral".

I haven't used a clutch to upshift in 28 years. It's so easy it's a joke. Here's an easy way to get the hang of it. Ride along in 2nd gear holding the throttle at a steady RPM about 1/3 of the way to redline, then apply a little 'up' pressure on the shifter until you can feel the shifter through your boot, then just let off the gas abruptly and it will jump right into the next higher gear. Remember to maintain the pressure, or increase it slightly as you start to shut off the throttle, then once you feel it click, just roll on the throttle again. You don't have to roll it all the way off either, just enough so the bike releases the friction between the selected gears. Once you get it once, you've got it, then you can experiment with shift points and throttle position, you don't always have to be 1/3 of the way to redline, it's just a good place to learn and practice, but once you master it, you can do quiet little clickers while rolling through traffic, to redline jammers with just a momentary flick of the throttle. Easy as fallin off a log, and I've never had to replace a clutch cable in less than a ridiculous amount of time. Having said that, I have never ridden a Harley either, so I'm not sure if the gears mesh or the shifter forks are the same, so you would have to ask a Harley person about them.

Skid's made an excellent point about clutch dis/engagement -- as such clutchless shifting CAN save a bit on wear and tear on clutch components. But he also knowingly qualifies his statement by saying it has to be done right -- here's why. While clutch plates (fiber/steels) are easily accessible and R&R-able, gear dogs and shift forks are typically not (unless you happen to own a CBR1000RR, and even then it's way less work). Under hard acceleration, clutch plates do encounter pressures and stresses, but they're designed to, even bone stock, even under WFO conditions. And when they wear out, you can replace with more, or superior, components that will perform better under fire and last longer before needing the yank. Gear dogs are not designed to be consumables, and as a street rider I feel it's unwise to learn c-less shifting during your morning commute. For all those who disagree, let me qualify that. When you accelerate in say, third, your transmissions two shafts (input & counter) have five or six pairs of gears that are always meshed, with different tooth counts for the six forward speeds. But only a pair of them are actually swapping power across -- these are locked to their shafts by a clever arrangement of dogs and slots -- nubs and holes -- that lock each gear pair to their shafts and transfer power. Now we again are accelerating, making the shift to fourth -- the nubs (dogs) on the gears make them look like the tops of cartoon castles -- and when two neighboring gears with dogs meet to change to 4th, the spinning one touches and spins the other one up, until the sides of the dogs are 100% mated and the shift is complete. We're in fourth. The problem is, when you clutch to shift, you temporarily disengage the motor from the input shaft -- making it easier for the shift to happen, because when dogs meet, there's no power to bounce them off of each other and hinder the shift -- the slower spinning gear will slow down the formerly-powered one until it engages and you feel it on your toe. When you go clutchless, an extreme metaphor is this -- is it easier to stop the blades on a table fan with your hand if the power is off, or on? Exactly. Now you understand what happens to the wildly spinning gears when you change up under power. Anyway, to wrap up this novel, I like to clutchlessly upshift -- but only if the tranny is well-cared for, and only if a slight chop of the throttle is used with the shift -- this eliminates most of the stress on the dogs and makes for much cleaner shifts. The engagement problem is also why racers use electric shifters with an ignition cut -- for the same reason I chop, to de-stress the dogs, but of course much faster to save precious lengths. Suzuki's a/o-cooled models all have the old design which is undercut from the factory -- the dogs are designed to draw together under power -- and it's a gem of buttery 'box -- it's far more tolerant of biffed shifts by design. Yamaha's R's have been criticized for clunky trannies -- but the clunk is the speed by which the shift mechanism slams the dogs/slots or dog/dogs together, which makes sense on the track -- the less time the gear pairs are in the vulnerable engagement period, the better for durability. Honda disagrees, as their streetbikes shift buttery and still have anvil-reliability at combat speed. On your bike, be sure to use a cycle-specific oil with lots of pressure modifiers like sulphur to protect your gears and components if you like to powershift, and change it often, watching for silver hairs or tiny flat scales that can signal gear damage.