I'm finding the "transmission slop", which we're all calling "the clunk" on this forum, to be quite distracting, and even somewhat risky in some situations.
Slow CirclesI was practicing some slow circles and figure eights in the street in front of my house last night, and had to stomp my foot down pretty hard a couple of times to keep from dropping the bike. The problem is that when keeping he throttle open just enough to maintain a slow speed, the gears are bouncing between push and pull. If I'm slowing down too much and I have to blip the throttle, there is a relatively long delay before the motor starts pushing the wheels again, and then I get a heck of a kick in the pants.
The obvious solution, which I'm sure you've all figured out, is to aggressively drag the rear brake. This keeps the motor pushing and avoids and delay when some acceleration is needed.
Deceleration to accelerationThe transition from deceleration to acceleration can be jarring. I've been trying to get the most battery regeneration that I can by using a lot of engine braking to slow down, but the drawback is that when I open the throttle again, I get the clunk.
The solution here is to get better at throttle control, but I have found that I've been concentrating way too much on trying to lessen the clunk at the cost of paying attention to the road. Hopefully over time this will become second nature.
Starting from a stopShinysideup has already found a solution for this issue:
Yeah, the "clunk" is noticeable, but ,,,
The clunk really bothered me for the first few days. But I've learned how to minimize it to the point of elimination most of the time. Either it's gone completely, or it's no more jarring than shoving my BMW into first from neutral at a light.
The trick is really easy and has become automatic. If I'm stopped on any surface other than a very steep downhill, I put my feet on the pavement and push the bike back a bit, maybe 6 inches to a foot. This takes the slack out of the drive train, so that when I next roll on the throttle, the bike just goes, smoothly. If I can't roll the bike back (steep hill or car too close behind me) I just very slowly nudge the throttle, while waiting for the light to change, which takes the slack out with just a very faint sound.
That solution has been working pretty well for me and others on this forum.
Alternative solution 1It should be possible to set the gears up for acceleration (i.e. push rather than pull) by dragging the rear brake and giving some throttle just as the bike is about to stop. In theory this will work, but in practice, this may be too much fuss when you've already got to remember to down shift, keep level, brake, and left foot down like they taught us in MSF class.
Alternative solution 2I wonder if adding some creep to the bike would solve the starting clunk issue. That would mimic what a gas bike is doing -- i.e. always keeping the motor pushing the gears. However, doing that would mean that you would have to start the bike in neutral, or have your hand on the brake, else the bike would start to creep forwards.
DisclaimerI haven't ridden all that many motorcycles in my life, mostly a couple of Kawasaki Ninjas, and both of those were well past their break in period, so I cannot speak to how bad the transmission slop is compared to many other bikes. All that I can say for sure is that it's significantly more than my Ninja 500.
