E-Z shifting for beginners

For more specific information on this subject, see the articles on Accelerating & changing gears and Doing practice exercises.

Despite the title, shifting is not exactly easy. If you're a new rider, there's a lot going on that you have to react to very quickly. Even if you know how to drive a car with a manual transmission, everything's backward. On a bike you clutch with your hand and shift with your foot. It's easy to fumble around some when you first start, so it's important that you get comfortable with how to work the gears, before you get out in real traffic and being in the right place at the right time depends on it.

Which gear for starting the bike?

A bike can be started:

• in neutral with the side stand down and the clutch out
• in neutral, with the side stand up and the clutch out
• in gear, with the side stand down and the clutch in
• in gear, with the side stand up and the clutch in

For everyone's safety, it's best to get in the habit of having your right hand on the brake when you thumb the starter.

Neutral

You'll never use neutral on a bike while you're in motion. Neutral is there for when you're at the red light that will never end (although it's still a good idea to stay in first, in case you need to get out of the way fast) or if you need to push the bike while it's not running.

First gear

First on the 250 is almost exclusively for starting from a dead stop. If the bike is rolling at all, second is usually smoother for acceleration, although you may have to "feather" the clutch a bit to keep it going.

What happens when you shift

Your engine has to always be spinning, even when you're standing still. Your rear tire, connected to the engine by the chain, has to be able to stop spinning without stopping the engine. To do this, they must be able to, for some periods, run at different times.

When you're fully stopped, you have the clutch lever pulled and the clutch is disengaged (not attached). ----| |----

When you're moving in traffic, the clutch lever is untouched, and the clutch is engaged (wheel attached to engine). ----||----

There's a space in between, a friction zone, where the clutch is not completely free, and not completely attached. When you start from a full stop, you start releasing the clutch to apply pressure, and when the engine and wheel speeds come to match, you should have the clutch fully engaged / lever untouched. That's easy to practice: find a good straight area (parking lot) and just work first gear. Start, stop, start, stop.

Upshifting

Pull the clutch in at the same time you close the throttle (one motion with two hands), click the shifter, then let the clutch out as you bring the throttle back up (same motion in reverse). You can do this amazingly fast. If you're damn good, you can do it without a clutch, but you shouldn't. Practice from a stop, reaching third gear, then holding in the clutch and bringing yourself to a complete stop. Note that you won't usually coast to a stop in normal traffic.

Downshifting

When you disconnect the engine in an upshift, it naturally lowers its speed because you're no longer applying gas. That brings the engine speed down to match the wheel in the next higher gear. Downshifting, therefore, has an extra step: Clutch in as you drop the throttle, "blip" the throttle (briefly give it a burst of gas to push the rpms higher than they were) and then let out the clutch and either apply gas because you're downshifting to accelerate, or just leave it alone because you're slowing down. Failing (by a wide margin) to match speeds like that will cause the rear tire to skid, as it doesn't have the traction to speed up the engine on its own. Practice by going back and forth between 2nd and 3rd gears, or 3rd and 4th, depending on where you are. That will be smoother than trying to go from 2nd to 1st, which is almost never done out on the road, except when coming to a full stop.

Stopping

When coming to a stop, run down through the gears, like this. You don't ever want to just coast in with the clutch pulled in. The bike is very hard to shift when it's standing still, and you always want to be in the right gear to get out of the way, if necessary.

Because first gear is so low on the Ninja, you may not want to let the clutch out once you hit first. Since you may not always know which gear you're in, you can let the clutch into the friction zone a bit and see if there is a noticeable increase in engine speed. If there is, you're going too fast for the gear, and you risk having the rear tire slip. Just pull the clutch back in until you get to either a slow speed or you come to the stop. You don't really want to go into first at more than about 2 mph as you're stopping. And remember to always stop with the transmission in first gear.

Learning to shift is just like getting to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.