Hello.I have recently purchased a sport bike and I have heard a few different opinions on how you should slow down on a motorcycle. I have heard people say that it is best to shift down and use the clutch to slow the bike down rather than use your brakes so much. I have also heard people say that I should use my brakes to slow down and not use my engine so much. I am trying to find out once and for all which is better to use to slow down. Brakes or engine? Thanks for your help.
Unless you have a new bike with a slipper clutch, engine braking can be a VERY dangerous thing for a new rider to mess with. Do it wrong in the wrong situation, and you will be in a slide before you know what happened. The best choice is to keep the bike in the gear you would need to accelerate again quickly. Be conservative with your choice at first. Use the brakes to scrub off speed. That's what they were designed to do. On another note: I can change brake pads in under 15 minutes per rotor. Six pads for my GSXR are about $150 for basic EBCs. A clutch kit with new friction discs and steels is about $320 MSRP, and takes the better part of 2 hours to do. It also requires you to take off the plastic, drain the oil, take off the side cover, soak the new disks in oil, keep the disks in order, and perform a clutch adjustment. For my money, I would rather wear out brakes than a clutch. When you are a more developed rider, there will be all sorts of times you might want to use engine braking, but for now, I would just learn to properly use the brakes.
No real good answer on this one. To be blunt in my 35 plus years of riding there is no once and for all answer to this. The short answer is I try to use a balance of both techniques. But in the overall scheme of things brakes pads are heckuva lot easier to replace than clutch plates!
Apart from requiring bedding in for brake pads (about 50-100 miles of average use is normally sufficient) rear brakes are not as efficient as front brakes and not just because of the smaller swept area. The rear of a bike during braking is lifting, as the weight transfers to the front, so the contact patch of the rear tyre on the road is getting smaller. The emphasis in any braking on a sportsbike type suspension and frame (and most bikes) is at the front because that is where the contact patch is growing. That is partly why many sportsbikes have two much larger discs at the front and a much smaller one at the rear, with corresponding sizes of calipers/pads. I do not know what is going on with the clutch it should not be stalling just because you apply it quickly or hold it on.
