Is it me or the bike?

[NinjaRed]

I've been noticing these things and I'm not sure if these are issues with me, my bike or if its normal:

1)
usually when switching from gear 1 to 2 I feel a jerk. however from 2-3, 3-4 etc its not as 'jerky'. is this normal?

2)
ive noticed that sometimes when switching gears up (usually from gear 1-2 and 2-3) it seems to get "stuck" where it doesn't fully change to the higher gear and the engine revs up when I apply some throttle.. so I have to (let go the throttle), pull the clutch again and tap the gear up again (to be in the gear I desired to be in first time). my first thought on this was: its probably me who is not tapping on the gear hard enough/ the shoe might be giving in a little so there is not enough force applied to change to gear? however, could it possibly have anything to do with the clutch adjustments?

Any thoughts, opinions, suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.



p.s.
ive always wanted to have this answered by someone who is more experienced rather than doing it wrong and hurting the motorcycle (if it does that):

say you're approaching an intersection where the light is red with a couple of cars ahead in your lane... so you begin to slow down by pulling and holding the clutch + no throttle while downshifting from say gear 4 to gear 1 as you start coming closer to the cars in front of you. however as soon as you downshift to gear 1, when you're about 1-2 car lengths from the car in front of you, the car starts moving as the light turns green.. is it okay to up shift to gear 3 while still holding the clutch (if the car that was in front of you has moved enough/ picked up enough speed)? So in short could you go from gear 4:3:2:1:2:3 while continuously holding the clutch? does this harm the motorcycle or is it okay to do that depending on the situation?

again, any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[Motofool]

1) and 2): It could be both of you.

Bike could have:
-Too high idle
-Poorly adjusted clutch
-Too heavy grade oil
-Abused transmission

You could be making:
-Mistakes in timing the up and down shifting
-Not enough use of the deflection of the clutch lever

Yes, you can go up and down all the gears with the clutch pulled in.

[csmith12]

Motofool always has good answers to questions.

Lemme add;
From 1st to 2nd can be jerky if your not smooth. Otherwise pretty normal, so work to smooth it out with the clutch and throttle hand. Shimming the cush drive and ensuring the chain has proper slack can reduce chain lash. You could always adjust adjust your shift lever to better fit you foot/boots for finer control.

As far as the stop light question. I think you will find it best to just downshift one gear at a time. So you are ready to go under throttle at a moments notice, such as that car pulling away. While there is mechanically improper with your example, when fractions of a second counts.... your example takes to long. The general rule of thumb is to always be in a gear that matches your speed of travel.

[kevheads]

#2 if it doesn't happen very often then it's you. mine's done that a few times when I was being lazy or half ass shifting.