the gear box has cogs as supposed to meshing. they are pretty much made for clucthless shifting. look up a motorbike gearbox on how things work for a better idea.

Also the blipping the throttle method is good but not absolutely essential as your bike has a slipper clutch. Its good to do when you are racing and need to go down 3 gears quickly.

Great thing to learn when you ride a bike without a slipper clutch.

The basic reason its done is to stop the rear wheel from locking up after downshifting. try going from a higher gear to lower gear quickly and you will see what i mean.

Amazing points.... Sir jee, you should write a book. Your valuable knowledge is scattered across xbhp... They need to be documented for the better of all others . Had read about the "blip" thing while downshifting on a magazine long time back, but had forgotten. Now I'll train myself for this.

I have tried cluthless up shifts on fireblade, and I was quite surprised that I did not feel any difference between a cluth and a clutchless shift. Felt exactly the same. Why that ? It was done on lower RPMs though.

Some very useful tips there Old fox, sir. The blipping phenomenon was explained quite elaborately and derserves an applause!

Most hard core bikers dont use this technique to safe guard their drive train...but rather for the pleasure of riding... especially i recounted the way i enter corners...when u start riding, these so called techniques becomes habits, tho its a desi bike.. but then, in chennai traffic, u wouldn't actually need to blip in most cases. cos you would be coming in for a halt because there will be a big red thing glowing in front of your eyes.... blipping also eats up a lil on your fuel efficiencie. who cares.. by the way, nice write up.

Like I had mentioned elsewhere on this forum .... use the exact same technique to pop a wheelie or spin the wheel too; just that the blip needs to be a little larger blip

@old_fox: Thanks for the detailed write up. Took a lot of patience I am sure. It is definitely full of useful background and information.

@ all: thanks to all the rest of you who have contributed as well. You have certainly enhanced my information on this front.

After all the reading and my own experimentation, I would tend to agree with csgup1's statement above.
I do feel the upshifts go a lot smoother without the clutch if they are done right - that is - getting the perfect moment as you let off the throttle and before you would normally engage the clutch.
On my bike at least, if I attempt to upshift and don't get that perfect timing, there is a lot of resistance and it sometimes feels like I am kicking a stone wall.
When you do get the timing right, the gear click's in place with far lesser jerking of the bike; and the sounds and tones of the engine, clutch mechanism, everything tells me that something is going right.

I understand all that has been said about clutchless shifting being damaging, but I am entirely non-technical and ride purely on instinct, which in this case gives me a better feeling without the clutch.

It's obvious, because after downshifting the revs rise up very quickly. Hence, a small throttle is necessary. Reg. your downshifting, I think ne should shift down around 2.5 krpm in these Indian high revvers ... P---, CBZX, etc...

Anyways, the engine gets very less time for revving up (between 2 gears) as we are not really pressing the clutch between the gears. Hence, I wouldn't recommend Clutchless downshifting ... Many others also say so ...

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@ LP: Companies give clutch because all can't shift clutchlessly. There are commuters, village rossis, etc... All kinds of people in our country. So..

ohh ok...

tried shifting the gears the cls way...i.e. clutchless....went pretty smooth once while up-shifting....tried it again but couldn't manage it.there wasnt any gear change whatsoever.

i completely agree with OF that changing the gear should be done in the least load possible. wont advice changing gears in any other fashion than old-school.

@OF
couldn't quite understand why should we rev up the engine while downshifting. no doubt it sounds good, but just noticed today that everytime i downshift on a regular ride, i do it because the speed's low and so is the rpm. when i clutch it the rpm comes down to almost idle. but more often than not i change the gear before it comes to idle and the rpm matches that current riding speed.
am i doing something wrong??

ok thanks fox will test it out 2morrow

bike gears use dogs, not mesh. hence you can upshift without the clutch .when done right it will actually prolong the life. downshifting is another story . i cant remember the last time i used the clutch to upshift on my 600 or 1000. i use it all the time to downshift though.

Im buying one of them Power Commander ECU's for my Unicorn then....

After changing the bike to a Fireblade and then labelling it a Unicorn

To all the clutchless shifters out there.. here's something that'll make life easier (at least for upshifts), but as much damaging

Power Commander Quick Shifter

I personally believe that clutchless shifting is not useful considering 1) Hardly anyone races (where actually clutchless shifts count), and even then it is not used regularly. Killer or poncho should be able to throw more light on this. 2) Downside is much more greater than the benefit. Consider it a very expensive proposition in the long run.

My reference to synchromesh was in relation to 'clutchless shifts' as an example of the need to unload the gears before changing them, though I should have specifically mentioned that bikes do NOT have synchro boxes. Bikes use constant-mesh gearboxes. And constant-mesh are not the same as synchro boxes.

Bada mushkil hai bhai! To express in words whats accomplished in about a second or so. OK, will give it a try again.

First, the need to 'blip' again: Say you're riding in 4th gear at 60 kph. The corresponding rpm is about 5000. Downshift to 3rd at that speed and the rpm's jump to 6000. This sudden jump is felt as a jerk, the tyre locks up momentarily (less so in bikes equipped with slipper clutches but none of our desi bikes' power outputs justify a slipper clutch) and the whole driveline experiences a harsh jerk. So far so good I hope.

Blipping is momentarily increasing the rpm's so that when the rider releases the clutch after shifting to 3rd (in the example above), the engine is already spinning at around 6000 rpm and so there is no sudden jump in the rpm's.

How it is done: In usual downshifting, the rider closes the throttle, pulls in the clutch lever, downshifts, releases the clutch while simultaneously increasing throttle.

With the 'blip': Close throttle, de-clutch, blip throttle (a momentary and snappy rotation of the throttle), simultaneously downshift, release clutch and increase throttle. As I said earlier, doing each discrete action is not the issue, any rider can do it. Doing the whole thing as a co-ordinated exercise takes practice, practice and practice.

Hope this helps...

Plz koi downshift with that blipping throttle explain karo more easily