How To Ride with Miles Davis

This entry is part 13 of 22 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #2

The Clutch is the key-Words: Miles Davis

When I was about six or seven I could only dream of having my own bike and I jumped at the chance to ride the odd mini bike. Unfortunately I had to knock back a couple of short rides on “proper bikes” because I didn’t really know how to use the clutch. It killed me each time! A few years later I had the chance to ride a little rental bike and figured it out…or so I thought.

True, the clutch is pretty handy for starting, stopping and changing gears up and down, but with an off-road bike, proper clutch and throttle use can give the rider incredible control whether it’s slow riding through technical terrain, getting up steep and/or loose and/or slippery hills, lofting the front wheel over logs, other obstacles, ruts, mudholes and many other situations that off-road riders face.

Basics

“If you stall, you fall” is a common saying, and on big four-stroke adventure bikes it tends to be pretty accurate. As an instructor for around 15 years, it never ceases to amaze me how in a single day you can give a rider with 10, 15 or over 20 years riding experience a totally new level of confidence and control just by helping him understand the benefits of optimum clutch and throttle use.

How many positions does your clutch have? Two: in and out? No, but if you answered “infinite” you were spot on.

Just think of a hill start when you were learning to ride or drive. There are times when a slightly slipped clutch gives you a much better result than with it either fully in or fully out. Even if it’s avoiding a stall or a bunny hop, it’s a help.

If you watch advanced off-road riders you’ll notice that most will have one or two fingers over the clutch lever at all times. If you have all four fingers wrapped around the ’bar it means you don’t have easy access to the clutch, and if you use all four fingers on the clutch lever, you only have your thumb holding you on the ’bar. Either way, this is seriously limiting in many ways, and especially when terrain gets techo.

Using one or two fingers over your clutch lever (and equally so on the front brake) means you have instant access to provide a precise use of the control to get the ideal result.

All bikes have different power characteristics, and all motors can stall, so you really need to understand the “sweet spot” of your bike, and also the “unhappy sound” of the engine – the one it makes just before it stalls and you slam to the ground.

The sweet spot is usually just above idle, so it’s very close to the unhappy spot, which risks a stall.That’s why it can be a bit tricky.

Something I should mention now is, if you use the clutch properly (slip the clutch), you will not damage or wear the clutch. This is something many riders do get stressed about when the topic of clutch slipping comes up.

The key thing to understand here is:
• Low revs and high slip = no stress to the clutch
• High revs and high slip = potential wear and damage to the clutch

Set-up

Make sure your clutch and throttle is adjusted properly. Cable clutches need about 20mm free play at the end of the lever, or one millimetre to two millimetres where the cable enters the clutch perch (hydraulic clutches are self adjusting).

An incorrectly adjusted clutch can cause all sorts of problems like constant stalling or fried clutch plates, so make sure you’re on the right track.

Look at where your controls (clutch and front brake) are positioned on the ’bars. Maybe slide the perches inwards so your two fingers are pulling on the long part of the levers. Also adjust the up and down position so you have a good feel in the standing and seated position.

Slow ride

A simple slow-riding exercise is the ideal way to understand the benefits of proper clutch and throttle control. Find a gentle uphill slope, and in first gear head up the slope slowly from the bottom. With two fingers on the clutch, gradually squeeze the lever to see how slow you can ride.

You’ll notice that it only takes a couple of millimetres at the lever to actually add and remove drive. As you vary the drive you’ll need to adjust the throttle precisely to keep the engine in the sweet spot.

At first many riders are very grabby on all of their controls: clutch, throttle and brakes. But as most people have heard, “smooth is fast”, so the sooner you can lose the grabby and blippy habits the quicker you’ll improve and the bigger mountains you’ll conquer.

Step it up

Once you have the gist of things you can challenge yourself with slow-riding circles, then riding slowly over technical terrain. As the terrain changes it becomes much trickier to maintain a nice, slow, controlled pace, but stick with it because the clutch and throttle feel that you develop is pure gold when you’re out riding in real life adventure situations. As your confidence grows, keep upping the ante. Look for slopes and zig and zag across the slope, make up an obstacle course.

Keep challenging yourself. Just remember, slow riding requires good balance, so don’t fix your vision down at your front wheel. Just like gymnasts or other athletes, look ahead and look at the horizon so you have the best chance to maintain balance and control. Don’t overdo it, between five and 10 minutes at a time is fine. Too long and you might overheat the engine or cramp your fingers.

Trials

If you haven’t watched high-level trials, either live or on Youtube, you need to check it out.

Trials riding is the ultimate when it comes to all of the key basics to control a bike: clutch, throttle, body position and so forth. When you see a trials bike launch into the air and up a rock ledge, the clutch and throttle are a huge part of making it happen. And when you watch Funniest Home Videos, the guys and gals flipping their bikes, you can see what poor control use can do.

High-speed performance

In high-speed braking and performance braking, you can use your clutch and throttle to optimise the bike’s stability while decelerating. When you hear riders blip the throttle as they go down the gears it means the bike’s engine brake provides the smoothest deceleration and limits the rear-wheel chirps, or compression lockups.

Take it to another level and watch a rider “back it in” like supermoto, or a 1200GS drifting into a corner. For some people, whether it’s watching or riding, this can be the ultimate. Using the clutch in this instance, to help to control the amount of engine braking, can really assist in making this process as smooth as possible. But don’t get carried away, make sure you have the basics sorted before you go backing your adventure bike into a hairpin at 80kph. It can get ugly

The wheelie

Everyone knows that chicks dig wheelies (…don’t they? Don’t spoil my illusion…). Using the clutch with the throttle to raise the front wheel over a log or a rut can u Low revs and a slipping clutch in technical terrain. Practice slow riding. Two fingers over the clutch at all times. 56 advridermag.com.au really make life a lot easier and give a rider many more options. You don’t even always need to get the wheel off the ground, but unweighting the suspension on many bikes will be perfect for rolling over smaller obstacles safely. This is another area where you want to make sure you don’t overstep the mark. Get a feel for the basics. Introduce some “clutch pops” with low torquey rpm and controlled throttle, try to pop the front wheel 100mm off the ground over a stick or a tuft of grass.

Keep practising and always remember to leave your fingers over the clutch so that if you get thrown back and keep winding on unwanted throttle, a simple squeeze of the clutch will take drive away and avoid a potentially ugly loop out.

Sand

Okay, deep sand isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but in this fine land you find it and it’s nice to be able to cope with it.

I laugh when I hear people say, “In sand, you just hold it flat out,” with a big twist of air throttle as they say it.

The truth is, you do generally need more throttle than when riding on hardpacked surfaces as the sand creates drag and your back wheel needs to spin to create drive. But how much throttle you need depends on many factors, like bike capacity, horsepower, depth and condition of sand and other things. There’s a fair bit of technique involved, but you want to only use as much power as required, and sometimes that isn’t a lot. The tricky part is, sometimes you’re cruising along nicely, say in third gear, when the track changes direction or the surface changes. You feel the front wheel dig in a bit. You only have a split second to increase drive and lighten the front wheel. Throttle can help, but depending on what gear you’re in, you may want to downshift, but that may take too long and the front may get really crossed up. You can use the clutch and throttle to create extra drive instantly, without the engine bogging down.

Summary

Things to remember:

• Smooth and progressive on the throttle and clutch. Lose the grabby clutch and blippy throttle syndrome.
• Two fingers over your clutch and front-brake levers all/most of the time. Be careful not to constantly drag the clutch and brake. You don’t want to squeeze the levers unintentionally.
• Get a feel for your engine’s sweet spot, where it provides great torque and traction.
• Over revving will reduce smoothness and traction.
• Avoid stalling. Understand your bike’s unhappy sound. Learn how to stay just a few revs above.
• Challenge yourself with skills training. Make sure you increase the difficulty gradually

If you don’t already use the clutch in this way, you’re missing out, or maybe just doing it harder than you need to. Good clutch skills literally open doors to the type of terrain that you can handle comfortably. Happy Trails.

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