Downshifting/Gear questions

[flynrider]

What Zoo said, and whatever works on your bike. My Bonneville gets very cranky if I try to put it in 1st after it is stopped, but YMMV.

Most bikes do. If I have to come to a stop from cruising speed in a relatively short distance, I just use the brakes. As I'm slowing to a stop, I just shift quickly down to first as the bike is still rolling slowly.

[Kal]

To be honest with you I generally have no idea what gear I am in. I change up when the bike tells me to and down when it needs it.

I quite often have to tap my left foot on the gears just to give myself peace of mind when I've come to a complete stop.

Occasionally I have experienced the not going into first, usually from neutral. It never occured to me to walk the bike backwards and forwards. Instead I released the clutch into the bite point, if its in neutral and not biting then release all the way and then bring the cltuch in and change gear. It seemed to work, different strokes for different folks I guess.

Have some confidence in your brakes, the CBR has fearsome brakes fully capable of bringing that monster down from 160mph to zero, stopping the bike from 60-70mph wont even work them hard.

I can't find a graph that shows power distribution on the CBR600. It sounds that you are running the bike in minimum revs for each gear. As I understand it in time as damaging as running it at the redline constantly.

Somewhere above the range of the throttle that you are exploring is the powerband. This is where your bike is designed to operate. Some bikes have a powerband so mild that you never notice its there. Sportsbikes tend to have pronounced powerbands.