Starting a motorcycle in second gear is quite a casual malpractice among few of the motorcyclist though some are habituated to do such, but most of them do it unintentionally. So whatever the practice, habit, or unintentional reasons it is; the question is what’s the impact of starting a motorcycle in second gear or in any other gears instead of starting from the neutral position of the transmission; let’s try to find the answer.

Starting A Motorcycle In Second Gear – Good or Bad?

Typically it’s advised, and the standard method of starting a motorcycle is starting the engine keeping the transmission idle or gear position in neutral or zero. But in practice, due to many reasons, a rider may not find the neutral or were in a hurry to get the neutral while had stopped the bike last time. Or, in some rare cases, some riders willingly intended to kick the motorcycle putting the gears in first or second; it may be to rush out fast.

So whatever the reasons are putting the transmission of the bike in active gears, often many of us tend to start the motorcycle just from there. And here is the question, is that okay or has some bad impacts on the motorcycle engine or the transmission system?

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In such cases, typically, there are some minor issues in the bigger capacity and powerful motorcycles where those can easily pull out the motorcycle from the idle position, even being in the second or the third gears. Here higher torque helps a lot to pull out the bike from the idle, and the rider needs to put the least amount of clutch effort to do this job, nothing else.

On the other side, in the small capacity motorcycles, starting the engine putting in gears, it may not pull out the idle motorcycle properly. It's due to the lower power delivery by the small engines. Hence obviously, those motorcycles need to pull out in first gear from the idle condition.

Whatever in cases of pulling in second gear, the rider may need some extra effort to push the throttle and apply the clutch. Moreover, the piston hiccup and engine knocking are very common in such small-capacity engines. So literally, it’s a bad idea starting a motorcycle in second gear, especially the lower power motorcycles.

Again, in such cases, heavy clutch slippage is obvious to match the engine rev and synchronize the engine power delivery. And the most important thing is in the time of starting a motorcycle from idle, the clutch setup remains dry, and while anyone starts a motorcycle in gears, he/she lets the clutch slippage quite in dry condition. So you can understand the impacts.

Nevertheless, both in the small capacity and bigger capacity motorcycles, it definitely needs to clutch in before starting the engine. And on starting a motorcycle in such a way every time the clutch slips with an unexpected pressure that comes from the suddenly rotating crankshaft.

It literally kicks harsh the idle clutch and forces fast to slip out. So it wears the edges of the clutch plates and also the clutch bucket; thus, it reduces the clutch life faster. And the same impact results worst in the bigger capacity engine due to the heavy initial force that comes from the crankshaft. So starting a motorcycle in second gear is just a bad idea which one should avoid, that’s it.