[morecarl]

Hi All,

I'm a new member here. My wife and I recently took the MSF motorcycle safety course and then bought herself an S50 :smile: - pretty cool gal...

I'm really proud of how well she is doing, especially considering that she had never even driven a manual transmission car before this.

The problem is that she is short shifting, because she doesn't know what the engine should sound like for a given speed. My question is whether there is a chart available that shows engine speed ranges vs. road speed for each gear to help her improve her gear selection?

 

[Trapper]

Mine was written n the owners manual. (04 Marauder) HTH. :welcomes:

 

[morecarl]

Her owner's manual showed the low shift points, but not the high end (red-line road speed for each gear).

 

[roysclockgun]

Even though the manual shows the low shift speeds, she should not be looking at the speedometer, in order to determine when to upshift. Looking at the instruments is a deadly habit, especially for a newbie rider.
I would consider riding in front of her and maybe waving when you know that she should be shifting. In doing that, she will soon begin to "feel" what is right.
Steve

 

[DrBob]

The bike makes peak power at 4000 RPM, which is far above the shift points listed in the manual. The S50's motor redlines at over 8000 RPM, which is something like 70 MPH in first gear, which I guess she is smart enough not to try. Just rev it up and go. She will very quickly learn to feel the shift points, rather than hear them or watch the speedo for them: the bike will pull very strong up to 4000 RPM, then power will start to fall off. The seat of her pants will tell her when she is past peak power, which is still only half way to the redline. So she is not going to over rev the motor...don't worry about it.

 

[morecarl]

Thanks All

Thanks for the info/advice.

She has enough sense not to watch her speedo and keep her head/eyes up - I just wanted to give her a feel for how much range she really has with the S50 motor.

 

[MikeyP9181981]

Hello,

The bike should have a rev limiter which shuts the engine off if it should hit 8000 RPM's. I hope shes not going to forget to shift, but I would think it would be hard for her to do too much damage to the bike.

 

[axel_2078]

Hello,

The bike should have a rev limiter which shuts the engine off if it should hit 8000 RPM's. I hope shes not going to forget to shift, but I would think it would be hard for her to do too much damage to the bike.

Shuts off the engine?? Isn't that dangerous if you're out on the highway? I thought rev limiters just kept the engine from reving over a set point?

 

[hawker]

She's a new biker/manual tranny operator and fortunately this is a situation that will get better with a little exposure. As pointed out over-revving is not a problem on this bike nor the problem you're concerned about. She thinks the object is to get to high gear ASP which she equates to being in 'D'. Shifting gears, in her mind, are just the steps she needs to get it into 'D'. (this is where we curse them for taking tachs off bikes, would have made it easier to demonstrate).

Suggest you get a friend (husbands/wives don't typically do well trying to teach each other anything) to spend a little time explaining how/why the tranny works. (You go over and polish the bike, stay out of the picture so she's not under pressure to maintain image). Then have him/her demonstrate with drive-bys where she's only observing and listening to what it sounds like at different speeds/gears. Let her get a sound range where she's trying to keep the engine, then that being in 'D' isn't goiing to let her be in tune at different speeds, but selecting a different gear will. So not being in 'D' is OK under a lot of circumstances. (gotta' kill that 'I have to get to 'D' ASAP idea.) Let her go pratice and get her to listen (not to you, that's hopeless, but to the engine).

Don't be afraid to show her what staying in too low a gear sounds like (over revving gets out of her sound range and how do I fix that? Shift to the next gear). Same thing on slowing down, getting low on her sound range? How do I fix that? Shift down a gear.

I'd guess once she sorta gets the idea how it works and a chance to get the sound range she's trying to establish, the lite will click on and she'll be as good as the rest of us. (fortunately you didn't pick a group with real high standards so success is almost guaranteed)