- Joined
- Feb 11, 2006
- Messages
- 8,436
- Location
- Jacksonville
- Bike
- GL1800 R1200RT NC700
- 2024 Miles
- 026983
I'll attempt a reply that addresses two things raised in the last several posts.
I'm blessed to have ridden 300,00+ miles in the last 15 years and the last 5 years includes about 40,000 on a DCT bike. I don't have just one bike in the barn so I get to switch back and forth between the DCT bike and the manual ones each weekend if not in the same day. I like the Honda DCT a lot, really a lot but if I could have just one bike I'm not sure I would want it to be DCT. I would miss shifting a manual. I think I'm a pretty good rider riding 20,000 to 30,000 miles a year and if I don't ride one of the manual bikes in two weeks or more I notice I lose some of the finesse skills that great familiarity with a bike gives. Oh, I don't forget to pull in the clutch, involuntarily toe a non-existent gear lever, or stall the bike at a traffic light - it's nothing gross like that. It's extremely fine motor skills that only I would notice like rev matching downshifts to the correct rpm/speed or feeling exactly that last mm of friction zone coupled with 200 more rpm of throttle pick the bike up two degrees of lean in slow work, pausing the exact amount of time to let a gear slip into place when the rpm is perfectly synchronized to allow it. I know these things about my bikes pretty well and I lose a little bit of polish when not riding that bike in just two weeks. I think pro athletes might feel similar. They are not going to forget how to make a free throw or hit a ball with a bat but if they don't practice 100 to 1000 a day then only they know the loss they experience. So I would miss a clutch.
You don't learn finesse skills without practice and experience and so these quick test ride reviews that diss a DCT can't possibly get an in-depth feel for how that DCT operates in a variety of situations. Even coming from an experienced motorcycle rider if it’s formed after a few miles it’s opinion a mile wide an an inch deep IMHO. A manual is always locked in manual but Honda's DCT is choices, choices, choices - fully automatic, or fully manual (w/o a clutch of course), or automatic with manual overrides of gear and shift points. Then you have the different modes with different throttle responses. Buttons, knobs, and switches and learning to switch off left hand friction zone for right foot brake modulation in order to mimic friction zone of a clutch- it's hard to get your head around it in a few hours or a few hundred miles. It takes thousands of miles to learn to ride a DCT to a high level of skill just like riding a manual does. So I can relate to bdalameda's reply. I've posted similar probably 100 times in threads like this. Preference for a transmission is a personal decision of course but if made after a short time it is not a reasoned decision.
The other thing is the concept of DCT opening up focus for other things like line selection and braking. We are fearfully and wonderfully made and possess a brain with the ability to learn amazing complex tasks and after sufficient "programming" of these tasks in the conscious mind, the realm of the upper brain, to store these complex thoughts and muscle movements into subconscious memory, the lower brain, to pull up and execute exactly when needed. Some would call these reflexes but a doctor or scientist would term it execution of stored subconscious program stubs. They occur without conscious thought which when compared to subconscious thought is very slow. In the beginning a novice rider is concentrating on operating a clutch, throttle, brakes to a great degree. Both hands and feet are occupied and there isn't much room for error. His brain's bandwidth is maxed out with stuff most of us do "without thinking". Most of his thinking is in the upper brain however. He has little mental bandwidth left over to examine the texture of the pavement for clues to friction coefficient or debris or for predicting the radius of a corner he can't see around just from the terrain and background clues that appear to a seasoned rider as big as billboards. We experienced riders know (usually) within a few miles an hour of how fast to enter the corner based on clues which our brains process hundreds of times a second. This happens on roads which we have no prior experience so it’s not prior experience. We see trees, fence lines, buildings, power lines etc that tell us reams of data about the road ahead that we cannot see yet the novice has no time to process the information right before him. With practice and experience the novice starts "seeing" the bigger picture but it's only because those tasks that took conscious thought at first are now stored in his lower brain, the part that operates in the subconscious. The brain has just so much bandwidth, it's finite (and I have less than most!) and things we do "without thinking" like shifting still take thought it's just that we are unaware of it happening. The downshift might just happen but we do use thought nevertheless in carrying it out. So when just before corner entry when we are thinking, consciously or unconsciously, about what gear we are in and if it is correct for the rpm and speed and radius and when will I upshift after apex we are using a lot of bandwidth that is finite even we are unaware of doing so. So enter DCT or a transmission that does not require thought and muscle movement to operate. The lower brain is relieved of tasks previously relegated to "going around a corner" and so opens up some bandwidth to focus more intently on the job at hand. Maybe our eyes see larger area a little clearer, maybe our body feels the contact patches a little better, maybe we smell a scent a little more distinctly.
In his book The Upper Half Of The Motorcycle; On The Unity Of Rider And Machine the German neuroscientist Bernt Spiegel takes the reader into great detail on how our brains allow us to ride motorcycles at a high level. It’s a fascinating read. (Why do many motorcycle riders never exceed 22 degrees of lean?) I read the book before I rode a DCT bike but he explained this concept perfectly, much better than I can.
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