There is no market. Honda made a stab at an automatic motorcycle in the 70's. Nobody bought one. It was slow and slushy and no fun to ride. They come up on CL sometimes and are pretty much given away for free. "Please get this thing out of there. Thank you." Motorcycle riders are adventurous, risk-taking types. Shifting is part of the fun and gives you more precise control which, in certain situations, may save a rider's life. Automatic transmissions are for people who really would prefer that someone else do the driving, or for people who sit in city traffic a lot. Paddle shifters are not even really all that fun, in my experience, being really more of a racing device to eliminate throttle lag when manually engaging a clutch. Sent using Hushmail On July 29, 2016 at 12:45 AM, "Charles McCall" wrote:Motorcycle ramblings with a question at the end.... The weather has been absolutely fantastic here for the past few weeks, so I have been using my motorcycle for my daily commute to and from work. It's recently back on the road after more or less being in storage for 18 years. It is true that long term storage isn't good for vehicles - either cars or motorcycles. I filled the tank up with gas and it all ran right on the floor... hoses that had disintegrated with time. Got that repaired. The gas on the floor was mixing with a massive oil leak caused by a gasket on the cam tensioner that dried out and cracked. Got that fixed. I'm glad my motorcycle is air-cooled or I know what would be leaking now! We didn't get off to a good start this year! The motorcycle is a 1982 Suzuki GS650, nothing particularly special but with a lot of sentimental value. I bought it when I was 19 and a college sophomore. I'd never been on a motorcycle in my life - neither as a passenger nor a driver. I walked into the local Suzuki dealer and said "I like that one, I'll buy it!" and paid for it with my visa card, at 19.6% interest. And I wonder why it took me so long to pay off my college loans? ;-) We went to the parking lot and the salesman told me "This is the clutch, here's how you change gears, this is the front brake....have fun!" And I learned how to drive on the way home. Ah, youth! The motorcycle has been all over the place. I went to Cornell University, in upstate NY, and my girlfriend at the time went to Michigan, so it made the trip many times. It's attended Sturgis (despite being a Japanese bike, but I drove it there unlike many of the Harleys!) prowled the streets of Chicago, etc. But it got put into storage when I moved to Europe and took a long time to catch up to me. It recently was made road-worthy and is still wearing US plates, although I'll have to fix that over the next year. It is very difficult and very expensive to insure a vehicle in Europe with US plates. But for those from the US or Canada attending Le Mans Classic - -IT CAN BE DONE! Anyway, my question. The tendency in race cars and sports cars is moving away from a manual transmission to an automatic. I know that isn't quite true but don't really care if there is still technically a clutch or not - if there isn't a clutch pedal inside, then it's an automatic! Why hasn't the same thing happened with motorcycles? Because the shift time on a motorcycle is already so short? Do racers even use the clutch on a race bike? The weight associated with the mechanism is a larger percentage of a light bike as opposed to a car? Just wondering this morning, as it was a nice morning for a ride and as there's no radio my mind went wandering... There is no market. Honda made a stab at an automatic motorcycle in the 70's. Nobody bought one. It was slow and slushy and no fun to ride. They come up on CL sometimes and are pretty much given away for free. "Please get this thing out of there. Thank you." Motorcycle riders are adventurous, risk-taking types. Shifting is part of the fun and gives you more precise control which, in certain situations, may save a rider's life. Automatic transmissions are for people who really would prefer that someone else do the driving, or for people who sit in city traffic a lot. Paddle shifters are not even really all that fun, in my experience, being really more of a racing device to eliminate throttle lag when manually engaging a clutch. Sent using Hushmail On July 29, 2016 at 12:45 AM, "Charles McCall" <charlesmccall@gmail.com> wrote: Motorcycle ramblings with a question at the end.... The weather has been absolutely fantastic here for the past few weeks, so I have been using my motorcycle for my daily commute to and from work. It's recently back on the road after more or less being in storage for 18 years. It is true that long term storage isn't good for vehicles - either cars or motorcycles. I filled the tank up with gas and it all ran right on the floor... hoses that had disintegrated with time. Got that repaired. The gas on the floor was mixing with a massive oil leak caused by a gasket on the cam tensioner that dried out and cracked. Got that fixed. I'm glad my motorcycle is air-cooled or I know what would be leaking now! We didn't get off to a good start this year! The motorcycle is a 1982 Suzuki GS650, nothing particularly special but with a lot of sentimental value. I bought it when I was 19 and a college sophomore. I'd never been on a motorcycle in my life - neither as a passenger nor a driver. I walked into the local Suzuki dealer and said "I like that one, I'll buy it!" and paid for it with my visa card, at 19.6% interest. And I wonder why it took me so long to pay off my college loans? ;-) We went to the parking lot and the salesman told me "This is the clutch, here's how you change gears, this is the front brake....have fun!" And I learned how to drive on the way home. Ah, youth! The motorcycle has been all over the place. I went to Cornell University, in upstate NY, and my girlfriend at the time went to Michigan, so it made the trip many times. It's attended Sturgis (despite being a Japanese bike, but I drove it there unlike many of the Harleys!) prowled the streets of Chicago, etc. But it got put into storage when I moved to Europe and took a long time to catch up to me. It recently was made road-worthy and is still wearing US plates, although I'll have to fix that over the next year. It is very difficult and very expensive to insure a vehicle in Europe with US plates. But for those from the US or Canada attending Le Mans Classic - -IT CAN BE DONE! Anyway, my question. The tendency in race cars and sports cars is moving away from a manual transmission to an automatic. I know that isn't quite true but don't really care if there is still technically a clutch or not - if there isn't a clutch pedal inside, then it's an automatic! Why hasn't the same thing happened with motorcycles? Because the shift time on a motorcycle is already so short? Do racers even use the clutch on a race bike? The weight associated with the mechanism is a larger percentage of a light bike as opposed to a car? Just wondering this morning, as it was a nice morning for a ride and as there's no radio my mind went wandering...