Let's Ride Page 9
If your bike lacks a center stand, straddle the bike (remember, you always get on a motorcycle from the left side because the kickstand is on the left, so it will be leaning that way), hold both handgrips securely, and squeeze both the clutch and the front brake lever. You’ll need to hold the clutch lever in to start most motorcycles, and holding the front brake lever in will keep the motorcycle from rolling when you start it.
If you don’t have a center stand, you’ll have to climb aboard the bike and hold it up yourself. When you’re standing securely over the bike with one leg on each side, raise the bike up so that it stands upright. Once you’ve comfortably balanced the bike, you can rest your weight on the seat. Remember to raise the kickstand up, since many bikes won’t run with the kickstand down. Even if a bike doesn’t have a circuit that kills the engine if the kickstand is down, you still want to make sure you raise it up because if you ride off with it down it could catch on something and cause you to crash.
Next, turn your ignition key to “on” and make sure the kill switch is not in the “off” position. I’ve seen more than one person wear out a battery trying to start a bike while the kill switch was in the “off” position.
With your left foot, make sure the bike is in neutral. You will see a green light on the dash that indicates the bike is in neutral, but a word of warning—don’t always trust that light. I’ve ridden many bikes that have a neutral light that will come on when the transmission isn’t completely out of gear. I trust my left foot more than I trust my neutral light. I make sure that I can feel the bike is in neutral before I start it. If you haven’t yet developed a good feel for the shifter, release the clutch and brake levers and carefully roll the bike back and forth to see if the rear wheel spins freely. If it does, the bike is in neutral. (Don’t forget to squeeze the clutch and front-brake levers again once you’ve gotten the bike into neutral.)
Once you’ve determined the bike is in neutral, turn on the choke or fast-idle circuit if your bike is so equipped, especially if the engine is cold. If it’s been warmed up, you shouldn’t have to bother with this. On a properly tuned modern motorcycle, you should now be able to push the starter button and start the motorcycle with no drama.
If the motorcycle doesn’t start immediately, don’t hold the starter button down. This will wear down the battery and can flood the engine or even burn out the starter motor. Instead, check for obvious problems. If there is a problem with your electrical system, you’ll probably be able to hear the starter motor turning over sluggishly. If your bike is in good running condition with a good charging system, chances are that the problem is something as simple as your having bumped the kill switch into the “off” position. This is very easy to do.
Another possibility is that you may have a bike that needs just a bit of throttle to start properly. This indicates that something is not quite right in your carburetion or fuel-injection system, but the problem might be so minor that you’ll never be able to track it down. Usually it’s best to just figure out how much throttle you have to give your bike to start it.
This will be tricky, because the bike will likely just require the slightest pressure on the throttle return spring; anything more than that will flood the engine with gas so that you won’t be able to start the bike at all. Developing a feel for dealing with your throttle on start-up is an art, one you’ll only be able to perfect with time and practice.
I’ve actually seen this procedure turned into art—I saw a professional comedian in Reno do a hilarious routine in which he reenacted the process of starting a carbureted Harley-Davidson. The bit lasted half an hour and was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Fortunately for you, this is a novelty act that isn’t performed very often out in the real world, thanks to modern motorcycle technology. As fuel-injection systems get better, this sort of problem is becoming increasingly rare.
ENGAGING THE CLUTCH
CHANGING GEARS WHILE RIDING a motorcycle is similar to driving a car with a manual transmission, except that you use your hands on a bike to do what your feet do in a car, and you use your feet on a bike to do what your hands would do in a car. The clutch works the same in a bike as it does in a car: it disengages the transmission from the engine. You just operate the lever with your hand instead of your foot. When you have the clutch lever pulled in all the way to the handgrip, the transmission is disengaged. As you let the clutch out, the plates in the clutch come into contact with each other and connect the transmission to the crankshaft.
The area in the travel of the clutch lever where the plates start to come into contact with each other is what the MSF calls the “friction zone.” As the plates engage, the motorcycle starts to move forward. To find the friction zone, pull the clutch lever toward the handgrip and shift the transmission into first gear. To do this, push the lever down with your foot. Then, with both feet planted firmly on the ground, keep holding down the front brake lever and slowly let out the clutch lever. When the bike starts to move forward, you’re in the friction zone. As soon as the bike starts to roll, pull the clutch back in and stop. If you don’t, you’ll kill the engine because you’re still holding the front brake lever. Do this a couple of times to get a feel for where the friction zone begins.
HITTING THE BRAKES
YOU’RE JUST ABOUT READY to start your parking lot practice, but before you start riding, you need to make sure you can stop. Stopping will require you to use both of your hands and both of your feet, all at the same time. In one motion you’ll pull in the clutch lever with your left hand, let off the throttle, squeeze the front brake lever with your right hand, push down on the rear brake lever with your right foot, and downshift with your left foot. And when it’s all over, you’ll have to remember to put down your feet to hold up the bike. Again, it’s not that different from stopping a car, except that you have one more brake control to deal with and you’ll need to hold up the bike once you’ve stopped.
It’s critically important that you use your front brake when stopping. An average motorcycle relies on its front brakes for 70 to 80 percent of its stopping power. Bikes with a more rearward weight distribution, like long cruisers, rely a bit more on their rear brakes, but the front is still the most important. Short wheelbase sport bikes barely rely on their rear brakes at all. In fact, if you watch a motorcycle race, you’ll see that the rear wheels of most of the bikes are slightly off the ground as they brake hard for a turn. On a racetrack, you mostly use your rear brake to settle the chassis in a corner; you use it very little, if at all, for stopping duty.
You’ll want to develop a good feel for your brakes because good brake control will save your life more than any other skill. The Hurt Report mentioned earlier in this chapter found that not using the front brake and locking up the rear brake was a factor in the majority of fatalities, and recent reports by various state agencies have found that this is still the case.
Motorcycle manufacturers have recognized how deadly this problem is, and some high-end motorcycles now use linked braking systems with valves that direct a percentage of the braking force from the rear brake pedal to the front wheel. This makes it much easier to engage in quick, straight emergency stops, but the technology is generally used only on the most expensive motorcycles, like my Victory Vision, and Honda’s Gold Wing. Most likely you’ll have to develop your braking skills on a bike that isn’t equipped with this technology.
If you lock up the brakes and go into a skid, it will be something of a miracle if you don’t crash. If you’re lucky, you’ll just fall down and slide down the road. If you’re not lucky, you’ll have a high-side type accident, as discussed earlier.
TAKING OFF
NOW THAT YOU’VE GOT a handle on what you need to do to stop and where to find the friction zone of your clutch, you can finally start riding your motorcycle. To get moving, find the friction zone of your clutch once again, only this time you’re going to release the clutch lever all the way and move through the friction zone. To do this you’ll ha
ve to release the front brake, but remember to cover the brake lever with at least two fingers from your right hand so you can grab the brake and stop quickly in an emergency. Covering the brake is a good habit that you should have throughout your riding career.
As you ease out the clutch lever and get into the friction zone, twist the throttle to give the engine just enough gas to start moving smoothly. Too little throttle and you’ll stall the engine; too much throttle and you’ll spin out and crash or even wheelie over backward, which are both terrible ways to start out your first ride. If at any time you feel you are not in complete control of the bike, pull in the clutch and apply the brakes to stop.
Because almost every motorcycle has a manual transmission, you’ll need to shift gears once you get rolling. It works just like in a car—when your engine reaches a certain rpm, you need to shift up a gear to avoid overrevving. When your engine drops below a certain rpm, you need to downshift to avoid stalling the engine. Your goal is to keep your engine in what’s known as the “powerband,” which is the rpm range in which an engine generates power most efficiently.
Overrevving can cause your engine to blow up in extreme cases, but underrevving an engine can do damage, too. It can lead to detonation, which is when there are tiny explosions inside the engine that can damage components, and it can also cause the buildup of unburned carbon deposits. But the main problem with letting the rpm level drop below the engine’s powerband is that when this happens you won’t have the ability to accelerate out of danger.
If your brakes are your primary tools for avoiding crashes, the ability to accelerate runs a close second. Sometimes it’s better to accelerate out of the way of danger than it is to brake to avoid it. If your engine is running below its efficient powerband and is bogging down, when you twist your throttle, there will be a pause before the engine reacts. If you’re trying to get out of the way of a speeding car and this happens, you’re probably not going to live very long. It’s best to just make sure that your engine is in its powerband at all times so you’ll always have the option of accelerating should you need it.
To shift up, roll off the throttle at the same time you squeeze in the clutch lever. When the throttle is fully closed and the clutch disengaged, move the shift lever up with your left toe in a firm, smooth movement until the lever stops. If you hesitate, your shifter might get caught between gears so that when you release the clutch and twist the throttle, your transmission will be in what’s called “false neutral” and your engine will just spin without moving you forward. This can be deadly if you are trying to get out of the way of something, or if some jackass is following you too closely on the highway.
To downshift, roll off the throttle and squeeze the clutch. Firmly press down on the shift lever, and then apply a small amount of throttle as you ease out the clutch lever. You do this to match your engine speed to the speed of your rear wheel. If your rear wheel is going faster than your engine is spinning, you’ll get wheel hop, which can lead to a dangerous skid.
When coming to a stop, you might shift all the way down to neutral without releasing the clutch, but you’ll want to do this gradually because you can damage your motorcycle’s transmission by shifting down into too low a gear while you are moving, even with the clutch lever pulled in. This is especially true if your bike’s clutch is starting to wear out.
This sounds a lot more complicated than it is. In recent years there’s been a trend toward motorcycles with automatic transmissions, but I think this is happening because people think riding a manual-transmission bike will be too complicated. It really isn’t. You’ll quickly get the hang of it, and once you’ve got a few miles under your belt, shifting—and everything else associated with riding a motorcycle—will come as naturally to you as breathing.
GEARING UP
BEFORE YOU DO ANY of the preceding activities, you’ll need to have proper riding gear. The minimum gear you should always wear when you ride includes the following:
Helmet
Riding jacket
Full-finger gloves
Long pants
Over-the-ankle boots
Helmets
A lot of people are surprised when they find out I never ride without a helmet. Like most people my age, I did ride without a helmet for decades. We didn’t even have helmets available to us when I started riding, so we never even gave them any thought. Then in 1983 I had throat cancer and had a laryngectomy. After that I didn’t have a choice. The air passing over my laryngectomy made it impossible for me to breathe unless I wore a full-face helmet, so I either wore a helmet or I didn’t ride. For me that was no choice at all—I started wearing a helmet and using a windshield.
Today I’d wear a helmet whether I needed to or not, and not just because they are safe; I find riding is more comfortable and enjoyable with a full-face helmet. It reduces road noise, keeps the wind blasts out of my face, and keeps bugs and other debris out of my eyes.
That said, there’s no doubt that wearing a helmet is a lot safer than not wearing a helmet. Harry Hurt, of Hurt Report fame, conducted a long-term study of helmet use for the University of Southern California’s Head Protection Research Laboratory and discovered that you are five times more likely to suffer a head injury if you crash without a helmet as you would be if you crashed while you were wearing one. Every study conducted since has backed up Hurt’s findings.
This doesn’t mean that a helmet is some sort of magic totem that will save you in every circumstance. If you get hit by a bus or crash into a guardrail at 80 miles per hour, you’ll probably experience so much blunt trauma to your body that you won’t survive even if you have a helmet. But for every extreme example like that there are many cases where a person without a helmet died from hitting his or her head in a minor tip over; had he or she been wearing a helmet, the person would have suffered only minor embarrassment.
Take Indian Larry, the custom bike builder from New York, for example. On Saturday, August 28, 2004, while filming an episode of Biker Build-Off, Larry was performing stunts for the crowd. He rode his stunt bike through a wall of flames and topped this off with his signature bike-surfing bit, standing up on the seat, his arms stretched out in a crucifix pose. But something went wrong. His bike was probably going too slow, no more than 30 miles per hour, and the front end began to wobble badly. Instead of leaning forward to grab the handlebars and then sitting back down in the saddle, as he might usually do, Larry fell backward off the bike and cracked his skull on the asphalt.
Everyone expected Larry to get back up. When he didn’t, friends and the film crew ran to his side. No one could quite believe it was happening. Larry had performed that stunt thousands of times. He knew what he was doing. Had he been wearing a helmet, he would have just been embarrassed on camera, but he wasn’t, and on Monday, August 30, Indian Larry died. The guy was a good rider with decades of experience. If it could happen to him, it could happen to any of us.
It doesn’t matter to me if you wear a helmet for comfort or wear it for safety. It doesn’t matter to me if you don’t wear any helmet at all. It’s a free country and what you do is your business, not mine. Just know that I think you should wear a full-face helmet. If you don’t and crack your skull and kill yourself, don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.
If you do the sensible thing and decide to wear a helmet, make sure you get one that is comfortable. If you’re like me, you’ll practically live in your helmet, so it’s worthwhile to spend a little extra money to get one that fits and has good ventilation. The only way you’ll know if a helmet fits will be to try it on.
Different helmets fit different-shaped heads. I find that Nolan helmets fit me the best. My coauthor, Darwin, is of Swedish and Norwegian descent. Some people call Swedes “round heads” and Norwegians “square heads.” There might be some truth to both stereotypes because he has a hard time finding helmets to fit his misshapen head. He finds that Shoei helmets fit him the best. You’ll have to try on a bunch of different helmets to
see which brands fit your head shape the best.
As for ventilation, that’s tougher to test when trying on helmets in a motorcycle shop. Generally speaking, the more expensive the helmet, the better ventilation it will have. A well-ventilated helmet will flow so much air around your head that when you’re riding at anything above a walking speed your head will be cooler with the helmet than without it. Believe it or not, when the temperature hits 110 degrees here in Arizona, wearing a well-ventilated helmet keeps me cooler than I would be if I rode without a helmet. When it comes to quality helmets, you usually get what you pay for.
Riding Jackets and Pants
When I started riding motorcycles, bikers had one option for a riding jacket: black leather. This was fine if you wanted to be Marlon Brando, but for those of us who identified with Chino there weren’t a lot of options. That’s changed completely now. Today you can get anything from one-piece Gore-Tex riding suits to fully armored mesh pants and jackets. To list all the options and features would take a complete chapter. At the very least you’ll want a jacket with built-in armor to protect you in case of a crash.
If you ride a lot, you’ll probably need at least two motorcycle jackets—one for warm weather and one for cold weather. Traditional leather jackets still work well for cooler weather, and you can get ventilated leather jackets for riding in warm weather if you like the look of leather.
Otherwise you can buy one of the riding suits from a company like Aerostich. These are the suits you see a lot of serious long-distance riders wearing. They are usually made of water-resistant materials like Gore-Tex, and can either be one-piece overall-type suits or traditional two-piece pants and jackets. These are nice if you commute to work on your motorcycle because you can wear them over your street clothes. The newer mesh riding suits are pretty nice, too. Most have built-in body armor, so they provide at least minimal protection in a crash, and they provide the maximum cooling in hot weather.