Bike ignition - why a button?

[c_dug]

Why do bikes use a button ignition rather than a key twist like a car?

c_dug
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[Itchy]

Probably so you can keep your hands on the bars and thus rev the engines up as you need to on IL4s in a car your foot does this.
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[Redoko]

I think C_dug was hoping for a really in dept conversation/discussion.


Itchy ruined it with being logical.
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[Fisty]

Because a push button is way cooler than a switch.
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[steppen22]

Also for safety, so you can keep the front brake covered with your right hand, and the bars steady, as you turn on the ignition, in case it lunges etc.

When I first sat in a car, I at first was looking for a switch, "where's the on-switch!"
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[Charlie]

Hmm I'd hazard a guess at it being cheaper. I think originally the lock part of a bike was probably quite a bit cheaper when compared to a car's lock, and the button costs next to nothing. Now they might cost a similar price however why will they change something thats broken?

Also bikes had keys before electric starters, the simplest and cheapest way to add the option to the controls of the bike was a simple button.

To be honest I very much doubt it is a safety feature.
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[panrider_uk]

Some cars have a starter button.

Mark
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[radical]

My Tula 200 has a key style electric start with no extra buttons, just turn the key and hold until it starts.

[Gazz]

Could be....

Incase you left it in gear and started it like a car ignition, and the bike jumps forward.




P.S. - I did this in my car today.


I fail.

[radical]

[Teflon-Mike]

I presume you mean push button start, rather than ignition.

The ignition is the circuit that works the spark-plugs that light the fire in the engine.

In days of yore, engines were started by variouse means, depending on what they were fitted to.
The earliest motorbikes were created by attaching a simple engine to a standard push-bike.

This was how Harley-Davidson and many others started out, and many contemprary 'Cycling' magazines carried articles about how to 'motorise' a bicycle, while I think it was De-Deon / Minerva actually sold 'plans' of thier single cylinder engine, for the enthusiast to make thier own, on a 'single licence' basis, a bit like buying a copy of MS Windows for 'home use'!

These 'Auto-Cycles, of course still had pedals, and the starting operation was to pedal up to speed, then tug a lever to engage 'Drive', usually a belt or sometimes a friction wheel, engaged by moving the engine so that the friction wheel touched the tyre or the belt gripped the pulley.
At which point the bicycles momentum made the engine turn, and after a few cycles, with the rider fiddling the advance and carburation controls.... if they were lucky..... it would 'catch' and start tugging them along!

In about 1904... a chap called Alfred Scott, had been messing with engines based on Benz designs, and had come up with two stroke engine, with water-cooling.

Looking at what he could do with it, he first put it in his boat.

Then he looked at his bicycle.

He thought about this for a while, and decided that strapping his engine to the bicycle was not the best way to begin, and set about designing one of the first purpose built motorcycles.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Scott_Squirrel_486_cc_1923.jpg

(1923 Scott 'Squirrel'; the 'Edwardian Elcie'. Looks like something out of a Jules Verne Novel, but the features it had were pretty advanced right up until the 1985 Yamaha RD350YPVS. In the mid 1970's when in a slightly more contemprary frame, with slightly more conventional styling, the Scott engine, built from the original tooling as the 'squirrel' was marketed as the Silk!)

It was remarkably advanced, and featured amongst numerouse innovations, a kick-start. He had no pedals.

This innovation, like the cranking handle on early cars, or the earlier pedal starts, started the engine on mechanical enertia, provided by human effort, and remained the most prevalent means of starting a motorcycle for generations to come.

So, historically, the motorcycle evolved with a switch for the ignition circuit, to allow the engine to be switched off once running, and an kick-starter for spining the engine over to get it started.

That switch, eventually evolved into a key switch, but the kick-start remained.

Then came the electric start, and the kick-starter replaced by an electric motor.

(Only it wasn't! Early Electric starters were so unreliable, that they left the kick-start mechanisms in place, so that when the e-start packed up, you could still get to work!)

But as standard ignition switches didn't have a contact to work a starter motor, simplest solution was to stick a buttom some-where to work it. On the handle-bar seemed convenient.

It has stuck ever since.

Oh, the 'key-start' on cars is a reletively modern thing too. On older cars, the cost and reliability of solenoids which makes a key-start feasible by having a low amp feed to power a solenoid 'switchg' to turn on the high ampage feed for the starter, meant that they too had push-buttons or pull-toggles. These had a spring and a big plate on the back to bridge the high amp starter wire. Reliability of solenoids didn't really become good enough or cheap enough for the average car until the late 1950's early 1960's to use key switches for the starter.
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[deleted111]

[2wheelsteve]

Safety
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[Chalky.]

I had an S2000, it had a push start button. But you had to turn the ignition on with the key to push it. So it was pointless, but I felt pretty damn cool

[mistergixer]

[WetSparks]

Bring back the kick start, all this wussy bloody electric starter nonsense