Downshifting vs Braking

[missouriboy]

...How many have ever heard of someone having to replace worn out gears? I've not in the 50 years plus that I've been riding motorcycles. If you use good oil. The metal in the gears never touch and don't wear any appreciable amount whether you use them or not...

EXACTLY! Decel is nothing but the opposite of accel. When you accelerate HARD (just for fun, or whatever reason) those gear teeth are doing it ALL, aren't they? And decel would wear the opposite sides of the gear teeth anyway, not increase the wear on the acceleration side. Now, there WOULD be drive-train thrust forces in the opposite direction of design-strength, but I wouldn't know if this is enough to be detrimental or not. Bearings & such...

 

[hut1]

I use engine braking/manual downshifting 95% of the time. I believe it was muscle memory that came in handy when my brakes failed while approaching a red light at highway speed. I was able to downshift quickly and slow enough to navigate my way through a busy intersection and coast to a stop on the shoulder..........in full pucker mode!

 

[askitee]

I'm a newer owner of a 2022 RT Limited. Coming from two wheels I've always been a fan of downshifting and using engine braking to slow down. I've been doing this with my Spyder rather than letting the bike downshift on it's own. Any issues with what I'm doing?

No issues; I do either. Sometimes I manually downshift, while others, I let the RTL do the work.

 

[Little Blue]

Do it Your Way

:chat:....Welcome back. Seems everyone has enjoyed this topic and has been somewhat positive about their opinions. So I feel good and let's move forward.

Tomorrow is another day. Let us enjoy life and Ryde Safe.
Stay Healthy. ....:thumbup:

 

[Mikey]

I ride like a Ken Block wanna be, that being said I find to many ''safety features'' on these machines.

It will not let you downshift if you are going too fast for the next lower gear (ie. 4 to 3 if you are moving at 50-60 MPH.)

I like to keep bikes up high in the power band, not this one, just another disappointing feature that a small percentage of us don't want or need.


Flame On

You should have got a 998 if you like to rev it up!!:2thumbs:

 

[SLICE]

You should have got a 998 if you like to rev it up!!:2thumbs:

i want to ride the new supercharged kawasaki. 200+ MPH

 

[Dutchy]

I use a Handbrake Kit as my primary means of braking as my right leg and foot does not work that well due to MS, so I am really relying on my right hand to stop which means I have to read the road well to stop in time and not ride like a lunatic (as much as it hate that), for my understanding if you brake with your foot on a Spyder you can out brake anything on the road because you use your foot if I am wrong there please correct me, in my case I can get close but there is no way I can compete with someone using there foot to brake a Spyder even if I can crunch 80KG in my hand there is no way I can compete with the almighty foot pressing on the brake pedal, so it really comes done to read the road and ride to the conditions.:2thumbs::spyder:

 

[DaniBoy]

You can choose to use your brakes alone as you slow; or you can choose to shift down & engine brake if that's what you prefer; none of my business or anyone else's but yours - but it might pay you to keep in mind that these SE transmissions our Spyders run are, for all intents and purposes, still just MANUAL gearboxes, albeit with centrifugal clutches (SE5's) or oil pressure/hydraulic clutches(SE6's) and some pretty sexy electro/solenoid computer enacted flappy-paddle (thumb & fore-finger) initiated 'quick-shift' gear selection capabilities; and as such they have a FAIL-SAFE downshift feature built into the Transmission Control Module (TCM computer) that's designed and intended to make the down-shift for you if you ever happen to forget or if you apply too much throttle for the gear/road speed & so risk putting too much torque thru that (higher) gear &/or the clutch. :lecturef_smilie:

So while the computer TCM has your back and won't let you do anything that'll likely cause damage, if you REALLY want to do what's best for you & the bike/its transmission & clutch, you'll ride & change gears exactly the same way you would for any other bike with a MANUAL gearbox.... and if that involves you choosing to coast &/or brake to slow down without personally initiating any changing down to match your revs/road speed & instead leaving all that to the Fail-Safe software programmed into the computer, that's OK - but so is initiating the gearchanges to match your slowing revs/road speed yourself; or even selecting the lower gears a bit early to help slow you down &/or stay in the power band/right rev range for that gear/road speed if you wish! :thumbup: Mind you, it might be a bit more important to practice either of those last two mentioned for riders of SE5 bikes, cos you can get a 'false neutral' when the centrifugal clutch starts to disengage if your revs drop low enough.... once your engine revs drop anything much below 3500 rpm the clutch will start to disengage and in some circumstances, that can see you free-wheeling... possibly at an ever-increasing speed if there's enough down-hill slope involved!! :shocked:

Still, the gearbox is made to handle either coasting to a stop &/or engine braking (or any other way besides ); if it wasn't, the gear teeth in the trans wouldn't have or need a bearing/contact face on each side of every tooth, but I reckon those're there for a pretty good reason; and besides, the computer won't let you do anything truly harmful to the clutch/trans/engine when changing gears anyway! Me, I personally ride/drive my Spyder as I would any other manually gearboxed bike/vehicle, and I generally initiate any necessary gearchange down-shifts myself, but not always - sometimes that might entail a bit of engine braking (ex-crashbox heavy vehicle driver here ) and sometimes it's just me matching revs & road speed to the gear selection seamlessly as I gently slow ( ); but I know that whatever way, the computer's got my back if I get it wrong occasionally, AND even if I completely forget to change down at all, or if I suddenly wrench the throttle wide open again in too high a gear for the given road speed! hyea:

Just Sayin' :cheers:

So Peter, you’re saying that the clutch starts to disengage on the SE below 3500? Does that mean that in slow moving traffic, like city, construction, etc that just creeping along is bad for it?

 

[Peter Aawen]

So Peter, you’re saying that the clutch starts to disengage on the SE below 3500? Does that mean that in slow moving traffic, like city, construction, etc that just creeping along is bad for it?

Yep, the clutch on the SE5's won't FULLY engage until the revs get up over about 3200-3400, there's a little variation in there; and on decel they'll start to disengage as your revs drop thru about 3500 (different on the SE6's tho - they just need engine running oil pressure! ) It's not really a biggie if you're just creeping along, low speed, low gear, low revs type for a little bit, cos it'll manage that OK to some degree due to the low torque involved; but you really don't want to do it all the time, for a long time, or try to change up too soon - wait until you can reach & hold revs above 4000+ or so for a while in order to make sure the revs won't immediately drop as you slow again & so push too much torque thru the clutch now that you're in a higher gear!!! Most of your 'around town' riding anything slower than about 35mph should probably be in First &/or Second gear, and you should only go to Third ONLY IF you think you'll be able to hold revs over 4000 or so for a bit of a while... but if it's slow &/or stop/start traffic, try to let the vehicle in front pull away a bit & get more space between you'n it so that you can actually rev more & ride a bit then stop or coast with no throttle, moving in fits & spurts rather than trying to continually just creep along barely moving as the engine ticks over juuust above idle. Your SE5 clutch will much prefer it if you open the throttle a bit more to move forward then consciously/actively shut it off to coast & stop for a bit rather than trying to continually creep along.... :thumbup:

At some point around, I think it was around mid 2013, BRP introduced thicker/stronger clutch plates to improve these centrifugal clutch's ability to withstand this sort of thing juust a little, cos too many people had been tooling around in higher gears at too low revs, & as a result they were cooking their centrifugal clutches; but this upgrade didn't stop it happening if you treated it wrong, it just improved things a little - funnily enough, this happened more often in North America where many people were more used to big twin cylinder high torque/low revving engines that only fired at every telegraph pole when doing 35 mph or less, & not so much in other parts of the world where higher revving motors were more common. IIRC, there's quite a bit of discussion on this clutch thing in some threads back around 2010 ish, certainly before about 2015 or so, if you want to search & do some reading; but if you still have questions, you probably won't get too many posters from those early threads responding now.

Make sense?? :dontknow:

 

[BajaRon]

So Peter, you’re saying that the clutch starts to disengage on the SE below 3500? Does that mean that in slow moving traffic, like city, construction, etc that just creeping along is bad for it?

It's not quite that simple. The clutch does not necessarily start disengaging at 3,500 RPM. Actually, I think the official number is 3,200 RPM. But regardless. What it means is that maximum clutch plate pressure is not reached until this magic number (whatever it is). Under slight or even moderate loading, a less than maximum plate pressure is enough to keep the assembly completely engaged (no slippage). As engine load increases and clutch plate pressure decreases, clutch slippage is more likely.

There is nothing wrong with appropriate clutch slippage. Clutches MUST slip, and all do. It is excessive slippage that will begin to destroy the clutch and should be avoided. So, creeping along in slow traffic is not going to be a problem.

 

[SLICE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zpWkDe-Z5w&ab_channel=RevZilla

 

[missouriboy]

Great video. "The only bad thing is No Brake Light." That's where a Decelerometer module comes in, but I never could get mine regulated satisfactorily, so I have it inoperable right now.

 

[cruisinTX]

I do a little of both. I typically touch the brake just enough to shave off a little speed before downshifting for two reasons. One is to light up the brake lights to indicate to anyone following me that I'm slowing down. Second is to save a little of the wear on the transmission and clutch cause by the sudden changes. Both steps are just old habits from riding motorcycles since 1968.

 

[Peacekeeper6]

My answer is going start a .... WAR .... I use my brakes 95% of the time (I have an SE trans w 1330 engine) I let the computer do the Downshifting ...... the other 5 % I downshift manually to stay in the power band in the Twisty's. .... Lots of folks will say the trans. is made to withstand the abuse created by "engine braking" .... IMHO (and many others) every time you subject metal to metal contact, this creates WEAR - period (this applies to the clutch also). I would rather buy brake pads then engine/ trans. parts..... let the fighting begin ... :roflblack: ..... Mike

You're not going to start a war with me because I basically feel the same way and do the same thing.

 

[KAMJAM]

Depends on the situation. If we are decelerating towards a red light, we usually let the system do the downshifting, I we are decelerating for a corner, we decide when to downshift. "Totally Situational" we just try to stay in the sweet spot.

 

[BajaRon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zpWkDe-Z5w&ab_channel=RevZilla

This guy is 100%, exactly right. Good Job!

 

[DaniBoy]

Mine is an SE5, and I’ve noticed that manually downshifting via the blipper is much smoother than just braking and letting the TCM do it. Letting the bike downshift by itself seems to be a louder, harsher “clunk”, I suppose because the RPM’s are lower than they would be if I manually downshift. Does that make sense? In my mind, the prominent “Can-Am Clunk”, (especially noticeable when shifting into reverse) just sounds like extreme wear on the gears and such. Shifting into 1st after reversing is smooth and almost silent, as is up shifting once I’m on the road. Is that normal? Are automatic downshifts clunkier than manual ones?

 

[CAV06]

Bought my first Spyder Nov 23 (23 RTL) after 50 years riding two wheelers. The weather is finally cooperating and I have started doing some serious riding. I'm loving the RTL. I have managed to stop grabbing for the clutch and hand brake and I'm getting comfortable shifting with the paddles. I'm fine downshifting for a stop, but when I let the bike downshift it often bucks and lurches when it shifts into 1st. I'm pretty sure this isn't normal. Is it something I'm doing? not doing?

 

[ThreeWheels]

I know all the arguments that the Spyders are designed for downshifting. Nevertheless brakes cost far less than transmissions. I slow down using brakes. Why tempt fate?

 

[Peter Aawen]

Bought my first Spyder Nov 23 (23 RTL) after 50 years riding two wheelers. The weather is finally cooperating and I have started doing some serious riding. I'm loving the RTL. I have managed to stop grabbing for the clutch and hand brake and I'm getting comfortable shifting with the paddles. I'm fine downshifting for a stop, but when I let the bike downshift it often bucks and lurches when it shifts into 1st. I'm pretty sure this isn't normal. Is it something I'm doing? not doing?

That 'automatic downshift' thing is designed as a 'downshift of last resort just to save you/your engine/trans from your lack of planning/control etc' for when you've forgotten or have just been too busy staying alive/out of someone's way etc to be able to manually down-shift too, CAV06, so it was never intended to be as smooth as a full auto! It's just there to protect your engine &/or trans from you doing the wrong thing by what's essentially STILL just a manual transmission, albeit with some sexy 'Flappy paddle activated Quick-shift' capabilities and a smart 'oil pressure controlled computer activated clutch'; so by letting it do the down-shift all on its own, you're avoiding bringing all those sexy controls & management things into play & letting system revert to its almost uncontrolled manual operation - and as such, it doesn't do quite as much in the way of road speed/throttle/gear rotation speed matching, and you stand a far greater chance of get a fairly clunky change. If you instead TELL the sexy control systems to make that downshift as & when it's going to do it best, by triggering the change with the flappy paddles & then letting the all the computers & electro-solenoids & the throttle blippers et al work together to make it seamless in the way the system was designed means you largely avoid all that! :lecturef_smilie:

I know all the arguments that the Spyders are designed for downshifting. Being in the right gear for a given road speed means you have a choice of braking OR accelerating without hesitation/issue. I slow down by changing down thru the gears AND/OR using the brakes as & when necessary. Why tempt fate?

You must've got yourself a bit mixed up ThreeWheels, so I fixed it for you in the Quote above! :thumbup:

hyea: :2thumbs: