Shifting with minimal clutch

I find that on the bike and in the car, it's often easy to just touch the clutch lightly and if there's also light pressure on the gear lever the car will flip into neutral and then into another gear easily, and the bike will go up or down gears easily.

It's a bit like clutchless shifting on the bike, but with less risk of clonk... I've been trying out clutchless upshifting and at higher revs it tends to go alright, but seems to need very careful pressure on the gear lever... lower revs or too much hoof and it feels awful.

How much damage can you do to a gearbox with dodgy clutchless shifting? Or should I just persevere and I ought to improve before I knacker the gearbox?

To me it seems clutchless shifting works best when accelerating hard, i.e. letting the revs go high before shiftning.
But I can't really get it right everytime, so I do the light clutch thing like you mention.
That seems to work really good for me.

Originally Posted by uthaug

To me it seems clutchless shifting works best when accelerating hard, i.e. letting the revs go high before shifting.

Same here.

I have been playing/trying this for some time now. At first I stopped as I thought I was going to kill the gearbox, it was really clunky and jerky. I think I have mastered it now though, even at lower revs!!! All I do is back off the throttle a very very small amount ( I think this is the key to making it smooth, as shutting the throttle totally makes it all jerky) and then gently and with the slightest of pressure upshift.
From 1st to 2nd I always use the clutch 2nd to 3rd can 'sometimes' be jerky but after that its sooooo smooth, even if just pootling and changing between 5-7k.

When you go to put pressure on the gear lever, close the throttle slightly as you do so.