Dost thou short shift?

Started by QBS, May 14, 2005, 06:38:36 PM

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QBS

Who amongst the V bretheren short shifts, and why?  Been doin long?  RSVP.  Cheers.

ProfessorRex

I short shift in downtown because of the MAC's they are loud.
#1 they scare people
#2 cops don't understand the safety need for loud pipes!

When I'm out on the road, I do not short shift at all

-Rex
Hey honey, uh, I got another vision... HONEY??? Oh yea, thats right she moved out...

Walt_M.

It's a situational thing. These bikes are getting old and don't need to be run to redline all that often, also they have pretty good low-speed torque and don't seem to mind 5-6K shifts. I live in the country and run mine up at least once every time out, probably just scares the deer.
Whale oil beef hooked!

Blake

I quite often will shift around 3-4 to keep the noise low and will cruise in 5th ar about 35mph.  With the quasi straight pipes on, it gives it a nice low grumble and keeps to po-po from thinking im trying  to speed away from them.  with nice country riding ill cruise around 6 and shift around 7, and in the twisties i like to keep it around 7 or 8 and shift there too depending on the situation.


But theres definately enough torque down low.



Blake
"At first it's like a new pair of underware... Frustrating and constrictive.  But then, it kind of grows on you..."

MotorPlow

Quote#2 cops don't understand the safety need for loud pipes!

Just my personal opinion, backed up with some police high speed pursuit driver training.

Loud Lights Save Lives, Not Loud Pipes.  Loud pipes just annoy people.  When I went through pursuit training, we did an experiment with the sound of approaching sirens.  "At speed" the siren was most noticable after the police cruiser passed the observation post.  Thus, the volume of the passing vehicle had very little bearing on where the vehicle was approaching from.  The flashing lights on the police cruiser were seen from in excess of a mile away (even in bright sunlight), but the siren was only able to be determined which direction it was coming from at about 50 yards.

I also do this with my kids when we are out and about.  We all try and make guesses as to which direction the fire truck/police car is coming from.  You can have 3 people making guesses and get 3 different directions guessed.  Some times, we are all wrong until someone spots the pretty lights on the vehicle.

However, with all that said.  The sound of a good running engine through a set of straight pipes is a beautiful sound.

Chris F.

Lucky

I don't completely agree. just from a laymans perspective, I live within a 1/2 mile of the police & fire stations, plus another town has to cut thru our main street (yep, Main St) to get to a distant section of town. we frequently see & hear them.

we aren't particuarly fond of air conditioning & assuming it's warm enough, the windows are allways open. when we hear  sirens, or loud pipes for that matter, it ALLWAYS catches our attention, & the first reaction is to locate where they are comming from.  

it may take us a minute to detirmine direction, but the awareness that they are present comes long before they are close enough to be a threat.

That said, modulating lights ft & rear have also proven effective

my .02,
--Lucky
1982/3 XZ550 Touring Vison, Gold on Black

Lucky

Oh, & as to short shifting, i do it a lot for a couple of reasons..
--I do lots of around town riding, & twisties.  
--there are times I like "playing" the bike like a musical instrument..sort of..
--I like to exercise the bike. this is hard to explane...:  I've allways felt that a vehicle should be used in as many situations as possable, i.e. hard pulling, cruising, fast take-offs, granny driving, etc.  you might call it a superstition or something, but the engines ive had last longest are used in all situations, in all different manners. engines that are normally run in one manner, all the time seem to fail at a much higher rate..to me...
1982/3 XZ550 Touring Vison, Gold on Black

J. K. (New Vision owner)

.......Sort of like a balanced diet. Keep it active, and it won't get heavy and useless. I like that theory.
 However, I'm afraid to abuse my bike. I dumped it thirty seconds into my ownership,(Funny story, actually.) and had it fixed in five minutes. Now that I know the bike a little better, I ride it all the time. But when I get on a freeway, at 7,000 rpm (5th gear), it'll only do 116 Km/h. Is 7,000 rpm abusing it? There is nothing mechanically wrong with the bike,(except for the scuffs from the accident) so I don't think that would be the problem. Am I being a sissy? or can I rev it a little higher with some piece of mind? I really want to get some speed out of this bike, and I read the Cycle World review on this site, and I'm having my doubts. 113 mph? at what RPM? I'm not afraid of accidents, I'm afraid of frying a bike that I like and, apparently, is rare.
 Just how much abuse is the bike capable of?

 Or wait...I live 3000 ft above sea level. Would that affect performance?

silicon_toad2000

I shift whenever I rekon there will be enough torque in the next gear to keep accelerating at the rate i want to accelerate at.
I'f I'm idling along a nice street lined with cafes having a perv then ill shift pretty low, if im in traffic ill shift so I know i can keep ahead of them.
I don't rev it if I don't need it.
But that said, if theres a nice sweeper just off the lights, it'll see 10.
One mans clunker is another mans blank canvas.

QBS

Thank you all for your responses.  By the term "short shift" I mean taking of in first and going to somewhere between 5 to 7 K rpm and then shifting to fourth or maybe to fifth and bypassing second, third and possibly fourth.  This is only done in low speed uncongested urban environments.  I do it primarily because I'm lazy and the great V engine has such wonderful low end torque that there is very often no need to take it through every gear just to get to 45 mph.  When I'm cruising urban streets, I get to fifth as soon as possible and leave it there.  A word of caution:  The V will tolerate this use with no problem or damage AS LONG AS the engine is kept spinning freely and easily.  Even 3k in fifth is no problem, as long as the throttle is applied very gently and slowly. I guess you could say I really baby it in town.  Mostly because its easier on me.

However JK, the open road is at the opposite end of the scale.  Anywhere on the tach goes, as long as it doesn't exceed 10k.  And yes, 10k does equal 114 mph.  Been there(more than once), done that.  Your V is a really remarkable machine.  It will tolerate continous 9k operation as long as there is gas in the tank.  Over continous 9k, things get a little more busy than will allow me to relax.  But a sustained indicated 90 to 95 mph is no problem given proper road and traffic conditions(aka West Texas).  Your altitude may effect performance but itwill not effect longivity.

My '83 has been living this life since 1984 and for at least 85k miles.  The heads have never been off and it will still red line fifth gear.  The V is a truely great sport touring bike.  Cheers.

silicon_toad2000

ahhh, gotcha now.
Yeah I do that quite often. Take off from the lights quick to get away from all those tin tops that you have just riden between. Quickly find yourself still in first and over the speed limit. Quick change up to 4th and a few hundred metres of idling (three and a bit feet to a metre roughly) brings you back to the speed limit and a gentle roll on of the throttle.
One mans clunker is another mans blank canvas.

83vtwin

    do you have both 82 and 83, and if you do how would you compare the power bands my 83 will bury the 140 speedo but i dont know how accurate the speedo is, i rode all the way from las angelas to boise idaho at 95 most of the way and it took less than 18 hours

QBS

I have never riden an '82 so can't comment on power band comparisons.  My '83 hits 114 at 10k and it's all over.  If you can bury your 140mph speedo, I'd say your speedo is highly suspect.  140 mph would have to be at least 13k, if not a lot more.  A stock V aint doin it.

83vtwin

one day while riding my cop condom went off (radar detector ) when i looked down and checked my speed i looked for the black and white and found him sitting up  ahead i was curiouse to see what he posted and he told me within 2 miles of what i noticed  on my speedo 56 mph.
    after i tore the motor down to rebuild it i measured the cams and found differant lift from the 82 cams on my shelf had all the same factory casting numbers but neither had part # on them. some people have told me  they are supposed to be the same part but

Kevin

Lugging the motor in too high a gear is harder on the motor than running to redline.Change the oil religiously, keep the valves adjusted and ride it like you stole it.Kevin

louthepou

You should always short shift from 1st to 2nd. The 1st gear is essentially made to beat stand still inertia. The rest (from 2nd up) is mostly a question of taste, as far as the metal parts in the motor are concerned. My humble opinion, backed by some chats with good wrench dudes over the years.

Louis
Hi, my name is Louis, and I'm a Vision-o-holic

admin

occasionally I will short shift given traffic conditions. most of the time I like to bring it up to about 6k before hitting the next gear.
I will agree with Kevin in that Lugging the engine is never good for it. with that said, tho' I do find myself looking for that 6th gear once in a while   running at 7-8k all day beats you up after a while.  that's one of the reasons I find myself on more backroads than the superslab.  on the loud pipes issue, it is of little benefit on the street, annoys people, gets you tired faster and a host of other things. it's unfotunate that the stock system is so quiet that it is the oposite exteme. someone commented about a hoover with a head cold, thats pretty good description . somewhere in the middle is where you want to be, loud enough to hear it but enough backpressure to not cause a loss of power.


-Ron

Lead_Deficiency

I usually shift about 51/2-6, I dont like to ride with it below 4 grand.

A little bit about the siren thing, people think "if its louder its better" the problem with sirens and the reason you can't tell where the emergency vehicle is comming from is the frequency the siren is broadcast.  Most sirens create a frequency that the human ear can not determine the source.

http://www.soundalert.com/emergencyvehiclewarningsystems.htm

Koaps

I had to jump in on the off topic louder thing just cause its an interesting subject and since I'm not riding my Vision yet, I can only refer back to my Ninja for the shift points, and that was more like you rarely go below 8k, stay inbetween 10k-14.5k to keep the bike in the sweet spot, short shifts were likely to result in stalls.

Louder is better with bikes for two reasons:

1. It alerts drivers(especially in freeway traffic) of a motorcycle approaching(which in Cali, tends to be spitting the fast lane and next lane over). When I drive my jeep, I'm highly aware of bikers and always make fat holes for them to drive through when in traffic, but sometimes I don't see them til I hear them approaching, and I would rather be scared by the blast of a pipe, then make a lane change onto someone with a silent scooter.

2. It scares animals away, again where I live in the mountain/coastal area, deer are an issue and can be your life(thank god for deer whistles right..even the cops swear by them), the more noise the less animals likely to be in your way(of course possoms are a different thing all together, slow, stupid and blinded).

Doppler effect aside, I would think the louder pipes help to both annoy and alert at the same time, and some cops may understand this, but that is just as likely as a cop agreeing with the speeding saves rule(passing is better then sitting), which some CHP will agree with, but not offically.


h2olawyer

If you have an accident on a motorcycle, it's always your fault. Tough call, but it has to be that way. You're in the right, and dead -on a bike. The principle is not to have any accident. If you're involved in an an accident, it's because you did not anticipate. Then, by default, you failed.