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is'nt going well at all. My upshifts are getting a little bit better but still not 100% smooth. But my downshifts are jerky as all hell. I even skidded the back tire today and that scared the hell out of me because I thought it was going to catch and highside me. I bought David Hough's Proficient Motorcycling but that was mostly about cornering. So I went out and bought Total Control by Lee Parks. That's a good book and in it he suggested "blipping" the throttle. I tried this the way he said it and I could'nt get it to work for me. In the book the method described is to turn the throttle about 50% of the way as soon as you pull the clutch in. But when I tried that and let out the clutch, I got rocketed forward.

The only time I can really get a smooth downshift is when I am either coming down from highway speeds or going really slow, like pulling up to a red light and dragging the rear brake. Does anybody know how to make this throttle blip thing work? Any suggestions or help would really be appreciated.

I was having the same problem. What I do to fix that is I just slow down to the point of the tach reading 2500-3000 RPM's. Then I will down shift and let the clutch out slowly. That will give me a smoothe downshift.

1st of all, hough's book isn't all about cornering.

that's just the 1st chapter.

blipping is simply a quick on-off-on throttle use. it works for both upshift and downshift. very important to learn if you wanna try clutchless shifting.

anyway... i was like that when i started, but then i got better as i ride the bike more. just keep practicing and get used to your machine.

m1a1dvr wrote:I was having the same problem. What I do to fix that is I just slow down to the point of the tach reading 2500-3000 RPM's. Then I will down shift and let the clutch out slowly. That will give me a smoothe downshift.

each bike handles differently... so giving your rpm range won't neccessarily work for his bike.

I realize that. But I was just saying how low I accually take the RPM's before I shift.

m1a1dvr wrote:I realize that. But I was just saying how low I accually take the RPM's before I shift.

touché!

VermilionX wrote:1st of all, hough's book isn't all about cornering.

that's just the 1st chapter.

blipping is simply a quick on-off-on throttle use. it works for both upshift and downshift. very important to learn if you wanna try clutchless shifting.

anyway... i was like that when i started, but then i got better as i ride the bike more. just keep practicing and get used to your machine.

what do you mean by on-off-on?

What he means is to get on the throttle and then right off of it. All it is a real quick jab of throttle. Just to bring the RPM's up to match the new engine speed that the downshift is going to cause.

When I downshift I pull the clutch in, downshift, give it a little bit of throttle to help the engine match the bikes speed and slowly let out on the clutch. I don't know if this is what "blipping" is but it seems to work fine for me and I've been told it's a little easier on your clutch in the longrun.