so my buddy just sold his GSXR 1000 K6 and got himself a Kawi ZX-6R and he phoned me to go for a ride yesterday at 8pm.We decided to go and hit some twisties on a newly built single land road with 2 way traffic. The bike was running flawlessy, was getting into each curve with all the power I can master until the last curve which is quite insidious. It starts as a minor curve and then gets tighter and tighter. Luckily it was a left hand curve cos I had the space of the incoming traffic on the right.(remembember we drive on the other side of the road)Anyway, I am fully bent, my ass is on one side of the bike on 4th gear maybe doing 11-12K and all of a sudden the bike goes into neutral. Losing power from the rear wheel, the bike pushes wider and wider into the lane of the upcoming traffic until I am completely in that lane and to make matters worse, I was less than a foot away from the barrier of the other side of the road and the bike didnt show any signs that it wanted to be leaned anymore in neutral. At least I was lucky, no cars were coming up. Maintained my cool and pushed into 5th when I again had control of the bike and got back into my lane.

What made my bike go into neutral? MEA CULPA. I readjusted the shifter so that i move my foot minimally to upshift and when leaning, I have a habit to push up my ankle so that I dont drag the tip of my shoe on the floor. This pushed the bike improperly into next gear and got caught inbetween gears.

Morale of the story - The ZX-6R won the first round of twisties and I have to suffer him whining for a week - joking. He is a very good friend and was ultra concerned when I told him what happened.

that sucks. atleast it wasnt one of those times when you were riding like an assthen you wouldvegot urself killed .

Billy, I've seen your videos, and you guys are pushing it to the point where you have no options. Imagine if there was a cage in the other lane (God forbid). Glad you kept your cool, but you have little or no options when you ride...stay safe, Doc.

P.S. the moral of the story is you still have a tale to tell.

yea voodoo said it best...you guys leave yourself very little margin for any type of error.
as for the false neutral if this is the first time it's ever happened, it could be that you didn't completely shift into 4th and when you started to get high in the RPMs, it poppoed outta gear into false neutral.

very good point tahoe! - wasnt considering that.

The biggest question is - should I have tried to pop in the 5th gear while i was still in my lane with a fully bent bike? In that split second I feared the bike would slide from beneath me and decided to keep neutral.

Jesus, you're running twistys @ 11K RPM in 4th? What is that, like 100 mph? On regular roads? Big brass ones.

was clocking 150kmh at that moment which equates to less than 100mph

billly...time to go gpshift...it'll make sure you have no more mishifts!
as for throwing it into fifth, i think it saved your hide...so it was great thinking...as long as you are smooth on the clutch, you'll be ok.
there are some sweepers that i've been on that are soooo huge, i hit redline and had to shift.

wow, my original message did not go through. oh well. BillytheKid, I was saying that I think that you need to readjust your shifter backor you should still kick it as hard like you did before the change.

You definitely popped out of gear and I think its better that you went into neutral and not a lower gear. I learned this a while back and I hope you will keep this in mind but, try not to switch gears on a turn. Switch only when you need to. Also, 11k rmps on a leaning turn is a bit much for a regular street rider. However, I can't judge since I dont know your level over experience. Good luck and Be Safe.

akevinci.... my skills are those of a guy who bought his first bike (F4i) 1 year ago, put down maybe 4,000 miles on the bike in all, driving maybe 6 months out of this year. So thats close to saying noob skills. My learning curve is pretty high right now.

You say you dont shift on a leaning curve? But with if you run out of rpms? I usually get a curve in high rpms on 2nd or mid rpms in 3rd but the engine shuts down at 14.5K and you're left with a whining engine - thats why i feel the need to shift. I beleive >11K in a turn is safer that anything less than that. I prefer to have the feeling that the rear tyre is sliding from beneath me and i can control that with a blip of my throttle.

P.S. Someday I'll post a video of this road and see what u think.

Thanks for your input guys!

sorry for the confusion up top for some reason i was thinking downshift, which like al said...is a no no.
yes long sweepers you pretty much have to shift or like you said, you'd run out of RPMs, for shorter ones, high rpms, late braking, delay apex and then hard throttle out so really no need to shift until you're coming out of the apex. i try to get my RPMs just right when i can, but it's not always possible.

check this out, you have a long left sweeper, you're hauling and already dragging knee, then run out of RPMs...you gotta shift, but you feet can't get under the shifter without scraping...hence...bust out the reverse shift!

Is that really the reason for reverse shift? I never understood why it was opposite of regular street bikes.

ORIGINAL: BillytheKid
akevinci... my skills are those of a guy who bought his first bike (F4i)

You say you dont shift on a leaning curve? But with if you run out of rpms? I usually get a curve in high rpms on 2nd or mid rpms in 3rd but the engine shuts down at 14.5K and you're left with a whining engine - thats why i feel the need to shift.

akevinci,,, whos that?
Thats exactly what Im talking about. Shift only when you need to; however, you should estimate at what speed can you do this curve to begin with; of course this takes time to learn. Try to go into the curve in a higher gear and around 7-8k rmps(roughly). This way you have much more room to play with. 11k does not give you much breathing room.
Pretty much this is the reason why I said that you should try not to (did not say DONT) switch gears in a leaning position/curve.. In the MFS courses they mentioned many reason why are regular bums like me should try to avoid this case. However, different situations require different tactic. So its difficult to generalize this. Be safe all.

I LOVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEE reverse shifting, ill keep it on anybike i have from now on!!!!!!!!

there's more reasons to reverse shift than what was previously posted...
i find that it makes more sense to downshift going up when braking very hard than it does to shift downwards...i dunno why...but granted...i can down super duper uber fast regular shift style...but now i can upshift uber duper fast gp style...