Blipping the throttle

dj_spoolin

Member
Just wondering how you guys do it? do you have to be in a certain RPM to do this? found this site.
http://www.sportrider.com/ride/rss/146_0402_shift_blip_throttle/index.html
Found this too from a SBN site, seems complicated for starters. That would be me:) but good read.

The only reason to "blip" on the downshift is to match RPM to wheel speed, and that's it. Each machine is different.
The SV1K has a wide power band and heavy flywheel. Lots of engine brakeing. Between that and my smooth style, I rarely have to do it, but I have a 5000RPM power band in which to work, so it's all gas and clutch most of the time. Only in the rarest, most hard pressed situations do I blip, and it's an automatic response.

Non Blip-----On a "normal" 600, you would ring it's neck, wing the shit out of it in 4th. You pull in the clutch and let off the gas to downshift, the tach drops, you re-engage the clutch in third, the higher gear speed smacks into the low RPM engine. The taller gear tries to speed up the engine, the engine (an air pump when off gas) overcomes the gear, which overcomes the tire, slowing the wheel, making the wheel speed slower than the actual speed, causing the rear tire to chatter.

With blip-----The difference is, you pull in the clutch, the tach drops with no load, you down shift and as you're letting the clutch out, you feed the disengaged engine enough gas to bring the tach up where it should be, while re-engaging the clutch, that way your engine RPM is up high enough to match the numerically taller, lower (3rd) gear, smoothing the transition and avoiding the chatter. It's sort of a really fancy way to slip the clutch, adding gas at the same time. Bear in mind this isn't magic, you can't slam down from 100MPH to first gear, it's all relative to "actual" speed.

Your problem is that the R6 has a very tight power band, between 13 and 16 thousand RPM. Below 10K, there's nothing there, you're out of the powerband, and it's like trying <comment removed by Moderator>. All the bits are in place, but it's just not gonna happen. Even if you're in scenerio A on the R6, 4th gear at 15K, you down shift and the tach drops out of the band, when you re-engage the clutch, when the taller 3rd gear tries to overrun the engine, the clutch "slips", allowing enough time for the engine and gearing to work themselves out in the middle.

So problem A, is that you need to have that thing at the ragged edge before your engine/light flywheel combo will work properly to do this. I'm guessing you're not at the point where you're pushing that thing to the max, that's scarey torritory. The one I rode would show it's belly shifting 2 to 3rd, one wheel up at 80, intake sucking like hell. It's exhilarating, and hard to think about what you're doing in that circumstance. That's really where you need to be before blipping becomes "natural".

Problem "B", is that when you are in that territory, you have Mr. slipper clutch babysitting you, and taking a lot of that "natural" feel, or necessity out of the equation. That's what I mean by too much bike. It's trying to make you do advanced overrev maneuvers when you're trying to learn the basic blip.

My recomendation is this-- Get on a big, straight, long open highway, and run the bike waaaay up into the tach, almost red line it. Pull in the clutch, and hold it in, and observe how fast the tach drops. Do this a few times so you can get a feel for it.
Next, do the same thing, wait two or three seconds, re-engage the clutch, (don't downshift), and see where the gear amacks the tach needle to when it re-engages. Do this in 4th or 5th, as you won't get so hard a whollop when it re-engages. Do that a few times, slowly.
Once you have an average guesstimate of where the wheel pushes the tach to, run it up, pull in the clutch, while it's pulled in, give it enough gas to put the needle where it was "pushed" to the last time (your average), and when you get it right, the clutch engagment will be much smoother. Practicing it that way, just disengaging/re-engaging at a constant high gear speed, will allow you to safely practice the "principal technique" without engaging the slipper and throwing your experiment off. Once you can do it second nature, then start experimenting with doing it while downshifting. Again, try it in the higher gears, to make it gentler and less likely to engage the slipper clutch.
 
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