ozzy
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need guberment cheese
Posts: 3172
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posted November 03, 2005 05:04 AM
Anyone try one of these?
Rekluse z-Start
  
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spam
Expert Class
Posts: 343
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posted November 03, 2005 10:04 AM
convert to an automatic for $500?? never heard of it but sounds interesting.... though I can't imagine "pro motocross competitors" actually wanting to use this....
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trenace
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Posts: 3056
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posted November 03, 2005 05:25 PM
 Edited By: trenace on 3 Nov 2005 17:40
On MotorcycleDaily.com they had a reader poll on automatic transmissions, a somewhat related topic. One of the principals of this company wrote in talking about his clutch that you are referring to and his comments were interesting, though personally I would (if I cared at all about it) want to go to the KTMTalk.com and see these comments on his clutch, when I was on that site previously I did not:
quote:
Although somewhat biased, I believe "real men will prefer manual transmissions with a semi-automatic clutch". Our Rekluse z-Start semi-automatic clutch has quietly made some big in-roads into the off-road motorcycle market. In three years we've gone from a one-person start-up in a garage to 16 full-time employees and will ship our 10,000th clutch before the end of the year. Go to some of the on-line forums like ThumperTalk.com or KTMTalk.com and do a search on Rekluse. I believe you will find it to be one of the most talked about products on the forums. The z-Start also has a very passionate following among it's users as well as some very passionate "automatic clutches are for kids, women and sissys" types.
The z-Start clutch gives most of the advantages of an automatic with the control of a manual transmission. I believe most trouble people have with their manual drive line has almost everything to do with clutching from a stop or at low speeds and very little to do with shifting.
We are just releasing the ProStart semi-automatic clutch for Harley Davidsons and we expect the ProStart to be a popular choice for street bike riders as well.
There's also one user report:
quote:
Interesting you only touched on the street side of this. I bought an 04' KTM 300 EXC last year that had a little over 400 miles on it. The guy installed a Rekluse Auto Clutch in the bike and my first thought was that's coming out right now. After I rode the bike and about a 1000 miles later, I am a little confused as to what I want to do.
It's fantastic in the nasty off road stuff like mud, rocks, roots, logs, etc. Not as fun in the wide open stuff that we have out here in Colorado. Who knows, maybe one day these will be available as an option from the factory. On something like a KTM 525 EXC, they'd be fantastic.
Personally, I don't see it, except maybe as that user said in really slow conditions over long periods of time.
The improvement I would like to see (for road bikes) is ECU-controlled rpm and load matching, so when you pressed the lever in either direction, the engine would almost instantly throttle to zero-load, enabling disengaging, and then very rapidly manipulate throttle to bring to exactly correct rpm to match the new gear and back to zero-load. Electronics can do this faster than a human and more elegantly (and easier on parts I believe) than ignition or fuel kill.
THAT, to me, is an area for potential real improvement. As one illustration of that, the slipper clutch (yes, totally different than you're talking about) is really a crutch for the lack of the above, IMO. The more elegant thing would be for the engine to match loads and rpm's precisely and rapidly in the first place, giving butter smooth and rapid shifts under any condition. It would be technically possible with fly-by-wire or computer-modulated throttles (not the same thing, in the latter e.g. Honda's MotoGP system the rider has direct mechanical connection but the computer can add or subtract pull from it as needed).
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bigsaint
Expert Class
Posts: 132
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posted November 03, 2005 06:33 PM
As Tren noted, they are all over the KTMtalk site. Seems the general consensus is that those that have them would never go back. Never tried one myself though I have entertained the thought on one of my 2 strokes.
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