Hitchcocks Forum

At the recent Scottish pre 65 trial I noticed a nice pre unit Enfield Bullet taking part on which the neutral finder appeared to have been ‘converted’ to act as a gear lever. Anyone know how this was done. Or was it my imagination?

Not your imagination, apparently a common mod on Trials Bullets. I don't know exactly how it has been done but a rider who has done it said that there is a snag which is that you no longer have a positive stop on the change so you have to be very practised at getting the next gear by feel alone. The reasoning for it just to save weight but I think he also said the change is a little more sensitive as you're not lugging extra metal components during the change. Let us know if you find out more!

REgards, Mark

You can certainly get each gear using the neutral finder but it's not like a normal gear shift where it returns to the same place between each shift, you'd need to move it up a notch with each gear. It's a useful tip that if you're stationary in first and struggling to get neutral, reaching down and pulling up on the neutral lever with your hand will put you there.

I have seen neutral selector used as a link for a tank side hand gearchange, it simply had 5 positions, 4 gears and 1 neutral if I remember rightly.
Re finding neutral from first.... just put heel on neutral selector then tap toe on gear lever - I do this all the time.

The gear change mechanism acts on the same shaft as the neutral finder. As others have alluded to, the sequential change mechanism is situated between the gear lever and the shaft that the neutral finder is mounted on.

If you fit a gear lever instead of a neutral finder, I imagine that it would be very good for changing into 1st or 4th gear, but pretty useless at finding anything in-between.

I personally find the neutral finder invaluable if you make frequent stops or the gearbox decides to sulk for any reason.

The traditional trials variation is to use the pre-55 type gear change mechanism, which places the gearlever much higherup the gearbox and also results in a slightly narrower gear box on the gear-change side, however I'm not sure that this could be fitted to an Indian gearbox without modification.

stinkwheel, if you are in 1st gear, you can find neutral by pressing on the gearchange lever as if going for second whilst pressing on the neutral lever with your heal. Keeping pressure on the neutral finder prevents it going past neutral into second.