[ICU]

I am fairly new to the riding scene and have a couple of noobish questions. I took a friends GS 500F for a spin around the neighborhood (i know this is an SV forum and talking about anything else is blasphemy...but I figured the rebuke would be worth the knowledge I would get in the end... ;D ) My question is when does one know when to shift to a higher gear? When I was out on the bike, I could feel the difference of when engine was producing power and when the engine just seemed to be whining with out much power output. It was at this point when I shifted to higher gears. I just wanted to see if I was shifting to early, late, or just fine? Also, I used the search function and tried to look up more information about proper shifting techniques and even tried the google way, but not much help. Does anybody know some resources I can read about proper shifting techniques?

Thanks in advance and safe riding!

 

[silversx80]

Any shifting before/at redline is good.

 

[ICU]

That simple? NICE!! If only more things in life were simple

 

[ZeroSpawn]

Just shift before 6-7k RPM if you want to save gas.

Make sure your not bogging down the engine by shifting at too low of a RPM

Anything below Redline if you want to go balls out and waste gas.

 

[httc84]

Shift points vary with riding style.

For aggressive riding, shift when the power starts to drop off close to the redline.

For casual riding, shift earlier.

For casual riding, you don't want to shift so early that you lug the engine in the next gear.

For aggressive riding, you want to stay in the particular engine's power band. For casual, not as important. I usually keep RPM down around town. Helps keep unnecessary attention away.

Power bands differ from bike to bike. I-4s like to be at higher RPM, V-twins you can ride at lower RPM and still have grunt.

 

[furyskater911]

it depends on the bike you are riding:
the gs500 is a parallel 2 engine, it hits the powerband in the higher rpm, you want to keep it between 6 and 9.5k rpm. the max torque is available at 7200 rpms whereas the max hp is available at 9500 rpms. you should shift at lower rpms to get better gas mileage or you shift at higher rpms to get better performance.