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eternal05Participant
Hey man, you might want to consider making a new thread on the forum and…you know…explaining yourself. Don’t hijack an existing thread.
eternal05ParticipantThe ninja’s a hard bike for passengers for two reasons:
1) It has sport bike posture, meaning your passenger will be higher than you, and far off the back end of the bike. This severely affects the handling of the bike, more so than it would on, say, some cruiser.
2) It’s very very light. The weight of rider and passenger will about equal the weight of the bike itself, meaning that any rider or passenger error can completely destabilize the bike.
If you want to attempt it, make sure your passenger is a pro already, and start out in a parking lot until you get used to the feel. It’s pretty scary when you get going for the first time.
eternal05ParticipantIt’s just a small bike. Period.
eternal05ParticipantBraking may be safer in a majority of situations, but it is wrong to say that accelerating out of danger is never appropriate. Yes, if you are just starting to pass a truck and it drifts into your lane, your safest exit is to the rear. However, if you are just about done passing a truck (i.e. even with its cab, for instance) and it starts to drift towards you, you’d have a hard time convincing me that the safest thing to do isn’t just to zip forward out of its way. That way you’re clear faster, you make yourself more visible to the truck, and you don’t risk the car behind you snoozing on your brake lights and slamming you in the pooper.
eternal05ParticipantEngine braking is a tool in your toolbag, like megaspaz said, but the name is misleading. If you need strong braking forces and your brakes still function (i.e. you’re not in the 40th lap of a race and suffering from serious brake fade), you need to use your brakes. Period. That’s not to say you can’t ALSO use engine braking to slow you down that much faster, but in my opinion, the following ideology is totally counterproductive:
“You can down shift to 1st gear from cruising in 4th, and use engine braking for your primary stopping power as long as you slip the clutch gradually, keeping the RPMS from getting too high, or locking up the rear wheel.”
If you’re shifting from 4th straight to 1st, then slipping the clutch until speeds match, you are using your clutch plate to do what your brake pads are supposed to do….and that’s a horrible waste of a clutch. Your brake pads are engineered to slow down brake rotors (i.e. the “disc” in “disc brake”) by strong pressure ==> friction. Your clutch is NOT meant for that. Even if you’re shifting from 4th to 3rd, slipping the clutch, then shifting from 3rd to 2nd, etc. you’re still redirecting the responsibility of slowing the vehicle to the clutch. That’s 30mph that you’re scrubbing away quickly using your poor clutch….ugh.
Engine braking, or “compression” braking as the lawyers like to call it, is the use of the compression phase of the engine’s power cycle (i.e. the one in which the cylinder head compresses the fuel/air mixture right before ignition and the power stroke) to slow a car down. Engines do not keep spinning at a given rate unless you continually add fuel for combustion. The moment you get off the gas, the resistance of fuel/air to compression, and the friction inherent in the system will cause the engine to slow. It is THIS slow-down that is known as “engine braking.” Using your clutch to smooth out what would otherwise be a terrifically violent downshift is NOT engine braking, though you are leveraging engine braking to achieve slow-down.
So, how do you properly use engine-braking? It’s really simple: get off the gas. That’s it. Say you want to slow down from 60mph in 6th gear to a complete stop using only engine braking. You do the following (you better have an airport runway ahead of you):
1. Get off the gas in 6th.
2. When you hit the bottom of your powerband in 6th gear, clutch in, blip the throttle to match engine-to-wheel speed ratio and shift to 5th, clutch out. This should be perfectly quick and smooth.
3. Wait until you hit the bottom of your powerband in 5th, and repeat above process to shift to 4th.
4. rinse and repeat…
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N. You’re in first, going quite slowly. Eventually you have to clutch in to avoid killing the engine, and a few seconds later, you’re at a dead stop.Want to slow down a bit for a turn? Engine brake! Get off the gas, and depending on how early you start, you might lose 5-10mph rather quickly without touching the brakes or the clutch. Perfect! Going down a steep hill and you don’t want to get your speed up? Shift into 2nd BEFORE the hill and use compression braking to keep your speed down. But if you need to stop in 150ft for a stop light, do NOT shift down to 1st and scrub away your speed on the clutch. That’s just a good way to burn your clutch out, even if it is a wet clutch. If you’re riding a Ducati or some higher-performance bike, you might not even have the benefit of an oil bath…so be careful!
To answer your question, improper or excessive application of engine braking, especially via the clutch, is diverting the oft-repeated and sometimes large forces required to brake to the engine and driveline components. This will wear them out prematurely, ESPECIALLY YOUR CLUTCH. This isn’t as big a deal in motorcycles, where the forces are smaller and the clutches are typically wet, but you will SMOKE your car’s clutch if you drive this way.
eternal05ParticipantI agree wholeheartedly with your rationale for running the light. Especially with our sort of vehicle, you can always gun it and make it through a yellow…even if you have to speed for a moment to do it. That’s always safer than testing the alertness/reason/patience of the driver behind you.
eternal05ParticipantThat’s just north of the University Bridge in Seattle, isn’t it? I knew that intersection looked familiar…and those lovely blue skies
eternal05Participant1) To reiterate what has already been said by everybody else, it takes a lot of balls and incredible skill to get wheelies out of the ninja 250. It absolutely will not happen spontaneously. Power wheelies are out of the question.
2) If you are somebody that likes greater control, agility, handling, and stopping power, the Ninja is the bike for you. It handles mostly like a bigger sportbike: very easy to flick one way or the other, stops on a dime, lots of ground clearance, etc.
3) If you want to take long rides, or if you want a more upright riding position, the Ninja is not for you. You tend to be hunched over the tank a lot, which, since you can’t put weight on your hands, means your back will do a lot of work to keep your torso at that angle. This shot is an extreme example, but you get the general idea:
4) If you want absurd resale value, the Ninja is your bike. Especially in times of high demand — oddly enough, most of the time — you’ll be able to sell a Ninja 250 for about what you bought it for (+/- $500 or so).
eternal05ParticipantThe Ninja 250 is definitely not a highway bike. I’ve been on the freeway a fair amount in my day, but now that I have options, I’d rather not. As I’m sure you know, the “ninjette” does 0-60 in around 5.5 sec with a good launch. That’s slow for a motorcycle, but damn good for a car, so you’ll have no trouble getting UP to freeway speed. The problem is that your available power really starts to dwindle once you’ve hit freeway speed.
Here are some reasons that highways aren’t the zone for the 250:
1) It’s a very light-feeling bike. The wind and road conditions tend to throw it around more than larger bikes.
2) It’s impossible to hide from wind. Part of this is my personal problem, being on the larger side. Relative to most bikes, however, even larger sportbikes, I have to peg my chest to the tank to get my head “in the bubble.” That’s no good on your neck, your visibility, or your sense of control. It works for MotoGP riders on the straightaways, but they don’t have 18-wheelers lane changing into them without warning. You’ll find that spending any amount of time on the freeway will be supremely uncomfortable.
3) You have no power. One of the key weapons motorcycles have over cars from the point of view of safety is agility. If somebody suddenly heads into your lane (i.e. where YOU are), you should have three options: move, hit the brakes, or gas it up. On the 250 you still have decent acceleration above 60mph to, say, pull past a truck in the adjacent lane. You absolutely do NOT have enough power to quickly zoom out of the way of a wayward car.
eternal05ParticipantI just ordered some adjustable footpegs. I’ll let everybody know how that goes.
eternal05ParticipantThis may be a slightly different issue, but if your transmission doesn’t “stick” when you shift gears you’re missing shifts. Even on the most finicky transmissions, you can usually avoid missing shifts by keeping pressure on the shift lever until the clutch lever is released. The increase in tension on transmission components when the clutch is engaged will keep the bike in bear. So in recap:
1) Pull in clutch,
2) Pull up (or push down) the shift lever and hold it,
3) Let out clutch, THEN release shift lever.
eternal05ParticipantThis may be completely unrelated to your problem, but a bike that’s not properly warmed up will feel underpowered sometimes. Even my Ninja 250R for instance, while being a carb-based bike (not fuel-injected like yours), normally gets launched on the flat at around 1,500 to 2000rpm if I’m feeling casual. When it’s warmed up, it has NO problem doing that. If the bike is cold, however, I have to launch at 3-3.5K rpm or the bike will die. The gixxer is fuel injected and doesn’t seem to have any issues like this, though I don’t tend to ride it in the cold.
In addition to the great feedback everybody else has given you with regard to practice, I’d also say that when the bike is cold, pay special attention to giving a bit more throttle and slower clutch feed. Do NOT idle the bike to warm it up. The moment it is ride-able (on a 40 degree day, it takes about 10 seconds of choke to get my Ninja read to go), ride it around casually (easy on the throttle, stay in low gears) until it warms up. It also goes without saying that you should avoid situations where you may need to dump the clutch or gas it up quickly as you may be unable to do so before the bike is “happy.”
To my choke-using brethren, this is a hotly-debated topic but my advice on the subject: use as little choke as possible! The idea is not to turn the choke on all the way and leave it for 10 minutes idling in your drive way until you can ride away. If the bike won’t start, give it the bare minimum amount of choke needed to get it to idle and wait just long enough that easing on the throttle won’t kill the bike. When you can roll on the throttle slowly without killing the engine (which like I said, is about 10-15 seconds for me even on near-freezing days), rev a bit higher than you normally would and slowly let out the clutch. As soon as you’re moving and applying enough throttle, you won’t need the choke anymore, so you can close it completely. Bikes (and cars) warm up MUCH faster under load, so it’ll be just a minute or two of riding around slowly before your bike will be warm enough to ride normally. Again, this depends on the bike. I hear that the remodeled Ninja 250s are particularly difficult to get going in the cold, but the recipe above works well for me.
eternal05ParticipantAlternatively, does anybody know of a good set of rearsets that they’d recommend for moving foot position back and/or down? Is there a lot of work required to adjust the foot controls to match new riding position?
eternal05ParticipantI was wondering about aftermarket options, but like you imply, I’d assume I’d have to get custom work to make that happen. I’d love for that to work, so I’ll look into it, see what happens, and if anything comes of it I’ll let you guys know.
eternal05ParticipantI’ve never dropped either of my bikes, but I have done something quite embarrassing that will even the score a bit. What’s worse is that I did it multiple times. It’s part of the reason I think I never dropped a motorcycle.
I’m also an avid cyclist and amateur road racer (that’s man-powered bikes, mind you), but when I was first getting into it, I had never used clipless pedals before. For those of you that aren’t familiar with them, clipless pedals are somewhat confusingly precisely the type of pedal that you clip into. You were a shoe that has a little metal (or something) cleat on it, which snaps into a corresponding mechanism in the pedal.
You think it’s tricky for a newbie motorcyclist to remember to put down the kickstand when they stop? Well, I forgot to clip out. I rolled up to a stop sign and, as usual, slowly came to a stop. Then I took my foot off the pedal and put…put it on…WTF WAI IZ MY FUT NOT MOEVIN!?!?!…….ohhhhh….!@#$…THUD. I dropped my bicycle, but with me still attached to it. It took me another idiot stop or two to figure it out, but let me tell ya: doing that in front of 20 people at an intersection is all kinds of embarrassing.
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