Fun fun at Phillip Island with the NC30

[superlite]

Say g'day to the bro for me and tell him (jab) the bike is now a lot cleaner. :-)

Ease up Greg! I'll admit though that it does look a lot cleaner in that pic! Glad to hear that you're enjoying the bike Greg, and looks like you're getting far more use out of it than I was

[Wilson]

Your RPM needle seems to have a mind of its own sometimes?

Erm .. that is probably my less-than-incredible non-Stoner-like throttle skills in action ....

That'd be you being a naughty boy and using your clutch when upshifting, I should think. You will make significant gains learning to shift clutchless.

Gorgeous bike. Can't wait to ride the Island myself.

[StrayAlien]

Glad to hear that you're enjoying the bike Greg, and looks like you're getting far more use out of it than I was

Hey gudday there Ali! What a nice surprise!

I am very happy top have the bike, honestly. After punching a Ducati 999s shaped hole in the Phillip Island track environment I had to sell a lung (someone else's, of course ) to pay for it. The 'get a track bike' thing has just worked out so well. The NC30 is way more fun I think anyways.

If you're down Melb way and we're heading to a track, you are welcome to ride it. No probs.

[StrayAlien]

You will make significant gains learning to shift clutchless.

[que: manic sounds in the background of me frantically looking up how to do 'clutchless shifts']

[Wilson]

[que: manic sounds in the background of me frantically looking up how to do 'clutchless shifts']

It's really easy :D. You can practice it on the road, and then it just becomes natural whenever you're riding.

Put a tiny amount of pressure against the lever with your foot, then when you want to shift, you just back the throttle off a touch and you'll feel the backpressure on the lever disappear, and you can flick it up easily. Then straight back on the gas! Overall, you are off the gas for a much shorter period, and as you get used to it, your shifts become almost imperceptible on a graph (except for the slope of the line flattening from the higher gear).

The only time I advise against using it on the street is 1st-2nd (as that's a big clunk), and if you're not going accelerating once you shift up. If you're just doing the final gearshift to cruise, then the shift will feel clunky. But shifting to get up to speed can be done clutchlessly.

I knew it was faster, but it was only when looking at logging from last weekend of two mates on similar spec bikes, one clutchless, one with clutch, that I realised just how big a loss it was to clutch. It was probably worth about 10km/h by the end of the (not very long) straight.

[StrayAlien]

You can practice it on the road, and then it just becomes natural whenever you're riding.

Legend. Thank you. Off now to practice. :-)

[Wilson]

No worries :). Hope it helps

FYI, here's a comparison graph. My mates on RGVs were demolishing me for drive all day (my bike was running much too rich). In this graph, I'm the blue line and a mate's RGV is the green line. You can see that his bike is outdriving mine significantly, but he's losing a lot of time using the clutch, and that's the only thing that's allowing me to keep in touch. We both shifted twice down that straight. You can hardly notice the shifts on my graph, but on his they stand out like dog's bollocks.


(me braking later than him is just because I was in clean air chasing someone down, and he was stuck in traffic and not able to push his brake markers)
I don't want to post the graphs of me vs the other RGV as it's quite embarrasing for my NC. Let's just say I was hitting the end of the straight at 140km/h, and he was hitting it at 155km/h with clutch shifting.

[StrayAlien]

Thanks Wilson, very interesting.

I've tried it riding around time and, yep, it is pretty easy. I've put the NC into race shift setup as it is pretty darn hard to get my hoof in under the rather lever when leaned over .... and PI is all left handers ...

So, I'll give both a go when next down there. Thanks for the tip.

Greg.