How To Ride A Motorcycle In 15 Minutes

Intro [Music] all right what's up youtube in today's video what we're going to be talking about is how to ride a motorcycle this would be helpful for anybody that's never ridden a motorcycle before if you're thinking about getting your first bike you're a little concerned about what it's like to ride a bike we're gonna go through that or maybe you're that guy or gal that just said i got a good deal on this motorcycle i'm gonna buy it you bought it you don't know how to ride it and you're afraid of getting on and doing the wrong thing or maybe you're just like i said you're thinking about getting a bike and you just want to know what does riding look like how do i do this thing is it for me well in today's video it should cover that what i will ask is that if this video is helpful to you please like please drop me a comment let me know if there was something that i missed or something that you wished i would have covered that i didn't we'll make sure to take care of that in another video and then if you like this content that i've been putting out and what i'm gonna put out in the future i just ask that you subscribe i would love to have subscribers tell me what they want to see so that we can build this channel together and grow this channel together all right so let's get started so first we're going to start with what we call the cockpit of the bike we're going to work our way from the left side to the right side after we go into the cockpit i'm gonna go on to the left side of the bike towards the middle and the right side of the bike towards the middle and we'll talk about what we got going on there so first right here this is not a break i thought it was a break but it isn't it is your clutch your clutch is what allows you to transfer power from the front of the bar from the engine to the rear wheel of the bike all right this is your clutch right here on this side you have what they call a passing indicator basically you click this what it's going to do it's going to make the lights on the bike flash a little bit brighter you can use that to let people know that you're going to pass although one good point they brought up in the safety courses sometimes this can be confusing if you're clicking this to indicate that you're gonna pass as the motorcyclist sometimes the cars can misread that and think you're telling them the pass nevertheless regardless of how you use it this is what that button does all right coming right here this is our low beam this is our high beam this switch right here with the triangles this is our going left going right this is our signal indicators okay so you move that to the left the left signal indicator come on if you push this in it'll cancel the signal indicator um most bikes well at least this bike that i have if you turn left it's not like a car so if you put this in left if you move this left and you turn left and then you immediately turn the bike back straight your signal light will still be on so you got to push this in the middle to cancel the signal light now moving down here this is our horn button this lets out a little baby horn that people can't hear you push this and your little baby horn goes off and no one knows you're there so uh but it's there right you got a horn moving towards the middle of the cockpit what we have is our our our ignition um some bikes have it this one does so obviously you have off you have on and then if you move your handlebars all the way to the left you turn your ignition all the way to the left here it'll lock the bike so that now the motorcycle can't um the the handlebars in the front wheel can't move left and right they're kind of they're locked in place that's supposed to be an anti-theft device how good is it i don't really know and i hope to never find out this is a quad lock it's a quad lock motorcycle mount lets me mount my cell phone here vibration dampener etc if you guys want to see a video on how to install it uh let me know i'll do that i'll probably do a video about that showing you how to install it how to put the motorcycle vibration dampener on there so you don't screw up your camera we'll go over that but that's not a part of the bike stock it's just a little black thing right there so you know like i said if you've never ridden a motorcycle before or you're wondering what that is or you're you're extremely new to this uh that's not stock right there now this right here this is our engine kill switch when the switch is is in this mode with this little circle with the x on it even if the ignition is on and you push this button here the engine's not going to run um this is also a safety mechanism you know if something crazy happens while you're on the bike you just shift shift it to here and it'll kill the engine this is actually how we start the bike right here this little little button right there that actually starts the bike and i'll show you in a second after we mount how we start the bike this right here is our front brake um two two notable things about the front brake is if you barely squeeze the front brake without actually engaging the brake pads i don't know if you can hear this little click here that'll flash your rear brake lights usually it's a good habit to kind of tap this a little bit if you're at the stop light if there's no cars behind you just kind of clicking that like that if someone's on their cell phone or not paying attention it could help you from being rear-ended this is the throttle you roll this back and it is your throttle it's what allows the bike to move forward gives the bike more power down here we have wait sorry second notable thing i i said two notable things so that's the first notable thing about the the front brake uh the second notable thing is keep in mind if you've never ridden before 70 of your stopping power comes from the front brake the front brake is does have the most power uh when you do brake you don't want to grab what we call grabbing a handful of grabbing a handful of brake you want to slowly gradually squeeze on that now coming down here to the left side of the bike right here what we have is our shifting this is how we shift the gears okay when when the bike is in neutral this is usually how most bikes work whatever bike you bought you know i would say just just play with it in a parking lot or if you have access to the manual just make sure that it works this way but for the most part most motorcycles are going to work the way i'm going to explain it here when the bike is in neutral if you push down one time that will take you into first that's one click down if you push up one click that'll take you in the second third fourth fifth and sixth to get into neutral it's a half a click down from second or if you're in first gear to get in neutral to half a click up okay with this bike and some motorcycles do have it and i do love this feature about the ninja 400 this bike has something called a positive neutral finder so if the bike is at a standstill and you click and you're in first gear and you click it up even if it's a full click it'll automatically find neutral for you i love that feature now moving over here to the right side of the bike what we have is the rear brake this button here or not button but this lever here is our rear brake 30 percent of our stopping power comes from the rear brake even though we got 30 back here and 70 up here remember we're going to want to squeeze both of those brakes at the same time it's going to increase our stability when we're braking it's going to help us stop faster with more power and in a more smooth manner all right How To Mount A Motorcycle all right so now that we talked about the different sides of the bike the levers the gears etc the gear shifters what we're going to do now is talk about how to properly mount the bike so first thing is if this if this your handlebar is straight it's usually easier so you just want to turn the handlebar left uh what that's going to do is make the bike lean over towards you more plus when we get on what you'll see is we're going to turn those handlebars straight if you have a heavier bike by turning those handlebars straight it's going to allow you to it's going to allow the bike to stand up on its own so that's a win so first thing we're going to want to do we're going to we're going to grip the left handle bar right here we're going to take our right hand we're gonna take our right hand we're gonna reach over squeeze the front brake kick our leg over straighten out the handlebars now we're mounting okay we mount it all right so now that How To Start A Motorcycle we've properly mounted the bike let's talk about starting the bike starting the bike's pretty simple first thing we're gonna take our left hand we're gonna grab this clutch we're gonna squeeze it second we're gonna take our hand here we'll turn our ignition key we'll let our dashboard come on we want to look for the bike to be in neutral if you don't have a gear indicator switch that shows first second third neutral etc just look for a little green in or some type of end that's lit up on your dash that'll let you know you're in neutral next thing we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and we're going to turn our engine kill switch from from from from killing the engine to not killing the engine once again we're going to move this from the little circle with the x in it to the circle with no x in it once that's done we're gonna push our starter button right down here and the bike's gonna start once we've started the bike we're gonna slowly and i mean very slowly release that clutch even though the bike is in neutral and we know it's in neutral the reason we're going to slowly release the clutch is we want to get in a habit of good clutch control we don't want to be doing this you get in the habit of doing that you get killed out there so remember it's not practice that makes perfect it's perfect practice that makes perfect using our left leg we push down and get the bite in the first gear notice that the neutral light is gone if this is your first time riding you'll notice that the bike when you put it in first gear will make a clunking noise and it will jump forward like this that's normal your bike's not broken unless you bought it used from someone shady on craigslist then i can't help you but now that we're in first gear all we're going to do even though our hand is on the throttle we're not giving it gas we are not doing this this bike will jump from underneath you first gear is usually going to have your most torque so all we want to do to get the bike rolling and underway is slowly release the clutch and i want you to listen for that friction zone i'm i'm gonna hit the friction zone three times and when we're hitting that friction zone we're gonna just keep slowly releasing and the bike's gonna move on its own but i want you to listen for that friction zone listen see if you can hear it all right one more time and friction you hear that it's like a whining noise one more time that's normal that's our friction zone when we're there we want to slowly release so we're gonna hit the friction zone and release and the bike will start moving on its own just like this now notice this hand is free i'm not giving the bike any gas uh if you want to come to a parking lot like like i'm i'm at you can come to a parking lot practice getting the bike in the friction zone or you know if you're at your house and in the neighborhood where there's not a lot of busy traffic practice getting the bike in the friction zone that'll help so what i'm gonna do is you know before i give it some throttle i'm gonna disengage the clutch with the left hand and you'll see that the bike's gonna stop and then we'll start again with just the clutch okay so there one one more time we want to get underway all we're gonna do is put the clutch in the friction zone and the bike will move on its own simple all right now let's give it some gas and move into stopping the bike so just a little bit of gas it doesn't take much to move the bike in first gear my recommendation would be you know especially if you're a newer rider come to a parking lot and just ride around in first gear it may look pretty simple how i'm you know riding at six miles an hour in first gear it's it's not as easy as it looks i used to screw it up a lot and get the bike jumping like a like a freaking bronco from texas but uh you know come come to a parking lot practice router control give it a little bit more gas you see that's all in first gear so stopping the bike we're going to slowly release the throttle slowly because if we release it too fast it'll jerk and i'll show you what that jerking looks like if i'm like this i don't know if you can see it on the camera the bike lurches for it it throws me right so we want to get that throttle control but stopping the bike is simple all we do is slowly release the clutch slowly squeeze the front and rear brake at the same time shift up back into neutral to stop the bike slowly roll off the throttle with the right hand while opening the clutch with the left hand simultaneously braking with the front brake and the rear brake slow gradual squeeze on the front and rear brake moving the bike into neutral by shifting up hitting our engine kill switch here first now some people will hit the ignition first some people hit the engine kill switch i do the engine kill switch because that's how i was taught in the motorcycle safety course and their argument for that is you want to hit the the kill switch first because it gets you in the habit of killing the engine with the kill switch that way if there's ever an accident or you know something crazy happening where you need to kill the bike quickly instead of taking your hand from here and trying to reach over it's just it's just a quick button right turn off the ignition steering wheel turning the handlebars to the left dismounting and that's how you ride a motorcycle super easy right