How motorcycle transmission works

Motorcycles are the marvellous engineering design in the invention history. Its transmission is a type of manual transmission. In this video, let's take a closer look at motorcycle transmission. In motorcycle transmission, we can shift the gear up or down by pressing the shifting pedal. This shifting pedal is connected with a mechanism through a shifting rod. This mechanism is known as the ratchet mechanism. This ratchet mechanism rotates the shifting drum. This drum plays an important role in the gear changing mechanism. In this drum, there should be five corners. But only four corners and the remaining one corner are cut out. Because, this is the neutral position and remaining all for shifting from one gear to another. These special shapes are called ‘ratchets’ and ‘valleys'. If we press the shifting pedal in forward direction, the ratchet mechanism will rotate the shifting drum in forward direction to level up gears. if we press in the opposite direction, it will rotate the drum in the opposite direction to level down gears. The shifting drum is connected with gears through special components called shifting fork. This is the actual motorcycle transmission. In this way, every gear transmission will transmit. Let's get closer to this transmission. The shifting drum cross section is cut out for special shaped channels. If the drum rotates, the shifting forks will slide right or left. From these shifting forks, gears can engage or disengage from one gear to another. Let's see how gears change. Every time we press the shifting pedal, the ratchet mechanism will rotate the shifting drum and the shifting drum will actuate shifting forks, these forks will control the sliding gears to engage or disengage. Now! We can see the types of gears used in motorcycle transmission. There are two different shafts in this transmission. They are the input shaft and output shaft. Input shaft is connected to the engine through the clutch mechanism. When we press the clutch, the connection will disconnect. Again when we release the clutch, it will automatically engage. On the other hand, the output shaft is connected to the wheel through a chain. To transmit speed between these shafts, gears are used. In these shafts, there are three types of gears used. First one is fixed gear. This gear has no freedom of rotation and sliding, everything depends on shaft movement. Second one is sliding gears. The sliding gear rotation is fixed with a shaft but it can slide right and left. The cross section of this sliding gear is internally splined. Third one is free wheeling gear. This gear has freedom of rotation but cannot slide right or left. Let's see in-depth details of how every gear transmission works. As we mentioned earlier, when we press the shifting pedal, it will rotate the shifting drum and this drum can control shifting forks right or left and the forks will slide gears. Let's see how every transmission engages and disengages. First gear! When we shift to first gear, the sliding gear will engage with free wheeling gear. Already free wheeling gear in rotational movement. The free wheeling gear will transfer its transmission to the output shaft through this sliding gear which is already engaged with it. The output shaft transmission will transfer to the wheel through the chain. This is how each transmission works. Now second gear! When we shift from first gear to second gear, there is a neutral between two gear disengagement and engagement. When the second gear is engaged, output shaft rotation is faster than first gear transmission. The gears design is based on different ratios. For example, in first gear the output shaft speed is slower than the input shaft. If we level up gears, output shaft speed is faster than input shaft. Now! watch third gear transmission. The Exact same thing happened in the previous one. Again shifting to fourth gear, there will be neutral between third and fourth. Finally, shifting to fifth gear. Now, you may have a question: can we shift to neutral directly from fifth gear? The answer is no. Because there is a block in the shifting drum cross section that does not allow shifting fork travel at 360 degrees rotation. We should press the pedal in the opposite direction to level down gears and finally shift to neutral. Watch the animation of how each gear transferred. That's all about the motorcycle transmission working principle.
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