Except for cars not doing wheelies quite so easily. Well that and you ending up on your ass and the bike 10 feet away .
Omegaman,
The solution for that is learning to ride on an 85 CC Yamaha.
Never had the wheelie problem…
No accounting for a lack of power. You could be trying to drive a Duster with a blown 528 Hemi and drop the clutch and it would just bark like a dog. Same with a 67 Chevy pickup with a straight 6 250.
A 2 stroke Honda CR500? Not so much.
(or really any other normal sized motorcycle)
Were you trying to make point?
I never caught a wheelie on my Honda 70 either, but I’t wasn’t for a lack of trying.
Apples and oranges.
The solution is experience.
I learned to ride bikes when I was young and the first stick I ever drove I only killed it 2 or 3 times before I had the hang of it.
the real hard point of both (as has already been posted upthread) is the clutch point, once you figure that out you can drive either, although (also pointed out) cars do have those wacky shifter things that move all over unlike bikes which are straight up/straight down.
if you can drive one you can drive the other at least as far as shifting is concerned.
keep in mind the biggest difference is that at the clutch point a car is much harder to get rolling than a bike is. less weight with a higher weight/power ratio mean you do need to take some extra care coming off the line on a bike. but again a bit of practice and its pretty easy.
For extra added fun, learn to ride on a bike with a jockey shift and a foot clutch. They don’t call them suicide shifters for nothing.
I think the main difficulty in driving a car with a clutch is trying to find the friction point with your foot. Also, a lot of beginners try to work the clutch in a car with their entire leg, basically using the hip to control a pedal that’s a few feet away. If you put your heel on the floor and pivot your ankle, it’s a lot easier and smoother.
You don’t have that problem when you’re using you hand to work a clutch.
MSF classes are very good, I took one. But you may have to wait 6 months to get into a class so sign up as soon as you can.
You must have long legs and/or big feet, because I definitely use my whole leg, and I’ve been driving stick very successfully for a couple decades. 
I have a Yamaha YZ85 and I’ve never ridden a bike that was harder to keep on two wheels. But still, starting small is a good idea. Just make sure it’s not a two-stroke race bike.
Are you kidding? A supercharged hemi isn’t going to bark the tires. It’s going to spin them until the car slids into a street lamp. I’d say you’re more likely to wreck the car than the bike. You just have the benefit of a cage protecting you a little.
Personally, I think knowing how to drive a stick will help you a little, but not much. Getting the muscle coordination down is the hardest part and it’s totally different between the two. And the type of bike plays a big part in how hard it is to operate. A 4-stroke trail bike or cruiser is the easiest, with a long-throw clutch, gentle but effective brakes, and a slow-revving and forgiving engine with plenty of low-end torque. My two-stroke motocross bike has a long-throw clutch but the engine is a challenge, with very little low-end torque that kicks in suddenly at a certain RPM. Releasing the clutch, you’re either fighting to keep it from stalling or to keep it from flipping backwards. And the front wheel is going to come up in first gear no matter what you do. Sportbikes have a very sensitive throttle, brakes, and a short-throw clutch that goes from completely disengaged to fully engaged in the last 1/4 of movement. (The higher performance ones anyway. This may not be true for 250’s and other sportbikes that weren’t racebred.) Learning to take off smoothly on one can take a while. On the bright side, the power delivers smoothly and it’s easy to keep control of the bike as long as conditions are good. But when the unexpected happens (the rear tire hits gravel and starts spinning or someone pulls out in front of you), the awesome power and sensitive controls will make the situation much worse for an amateur. Not a good bike for beginners.
I don’t think my foot is big enough to do that. Even if it was I wouldn’t have the strength to work the clutch with my ankle and certainly not the endurance. When I work the clutch my heel slides back and forth across the floor mat (wearing a nice hole in it) and my knee moves up and down. I’m not sure I could do while keeping my heel stationary.
Whuu? In what kind of car? I’ve probably driven 25 different stick shift cars and not one of them had a clutch that was anywhere near short or light enough to do this. And I wear a 12-and-a-half, US.
Okay, let me clarify (and yes, I do have long legs, but I wear size 10 shoes, so my feet aren’t that large).
I’ve driven just about every type of stick-shift vehicle made and with the exception of a Chevy Step-Van (where the clutch angled almost straight up from the floor), I’ve been able to do this pretty much the same in each vehicle.
I have my heel on the floor and the ball of my foot on the clutch and everything slides forward to push the clutch in.
When I release the clutch pedal, I angle my foot back until I feel the clutch start to grab. At that point, the car starts rolling and I slide my foot back.
The crucial point is from when the clutch starts to grab until it’s fully engaged, which shouldn’t be a whole lot of pedal travel. That’s where you need some degree of control, or you’re going to kill the car or at least have a rough start. Once you’re past that point, you can just lift your foot off the pedal.
None of this is nearly as important when you’re already moving as it is when you’re starting from a dead stop.
My ex-wife had a tendency to buck the car a lot, and I showed her how to do this and she was able to clutch smoothly after that, even with her size 6 shoes. Of course, she’s never going to be likely to get behind the wheel of a truck or bus…she’d probably have some trouble with that.
ETA: I might have further clarification later on…I don’t currently have a working stick-shift to drive, so I’m going to a friend’s house to see if he’ll let me drive his wife’s Saab around for a little while so I can be absolutely sure about this.
I can understand that a little more. Last night when I got in my car I tried what you were saying. I could keep my heel kind of planted to let the clutch out, but at that point my heel was to far under the pedal to get any leverage and I found myself bring my whole leg back up so I could push it in. It probably didn’t help that it’s REALLY cold and my clutch feels like it’s traveling through clay until it warms up a little.
But still, unless I’m really paying attention, I move my whole leg up and down and have still have great control over it.
Okay, just to verify, I drove my friend’s Saab last night, which has a VERY stiff clutch.
My heel was on the floor from when the clutch started to grab until full engagement. I did have to pick my whole foot up to get my foot off the pedal, but as Joey P said, the foot is angled too far back after a certain point to keep the heel planted on the floor.
My heel is only on the floor during the critical period of slippage. It does give me a lot of control over the clutch.
The analogy to the motorcycle clutch is that you have your fingers on the clutch handle and your thumb around the handgrip, so you have good leverage (?) to control the movement of your fingers. Some people with short legs or really small feet may not be able to have that kind of control over a car clutch.
Today while I was sitting in line at the bank I tried it. I understand what you mean, but there’s no way I could even keep my heel planted during the ‘critical period’* I mean, if I had to I suppose I could, but my clutch pushes back hard enough that using my entire leg balances it out perfectly and I can be quite graceful (for lack of a better word) with it. I think this is one of those things where you’ve always done it that way and I’ve always done it this way and that’s just how it is.
*ETA also when in trying to keep my heel in one place I found myself pushing my back into my chair to keep my heel planted.
Hi Joey,
I live in Milwaukee. I took the MSF class at MATC and thought it was totally worth it. I had a motorcycle when I was 18, unfortunately I crashed doing 50 on a county Highway. 20 years later I decided to get another one and took the MSF course. All I needed to have was a helmet, long sleeved shirt or jacket, long pants, gloves and over the ankle shoes. They even had loaner helmets if you didn’t have your own, I wasn’t going to stick my head in one though. They provide the motorcycles and an off the street location to learn under their supervision.
Our class ran 2 nights a week for like 3 or 4 weeks. 1 night was class room stuff the other was on the bike. My brother took it as a 2 full day 1 weekend class. If you passed the written test and riding skills test at the end of the course all you needed to get your motorcycle certification was pass the written test at the DMV.
3 years in and everything is going well. I’m even thinking about signing up for their advanced rider course.
Good luck,
Rob
That’s the class I plan on taking. Though I hear it’s REALLY hard to get into. My BIL tells me storys of people getting to MATC at 5 in the morning on registration day and still not getting in. Part of that, I believe is since you don’t have to take the road test with the DMV afterwords. Again my BIL tells me that he knows people that have been riding with their temps for 18 months (the legal limit) and still can’t pass the DMV’s road test. Whether it’ll be this summer or 10 years from now, I don’t know, but someday. I have very few goals in life, being able to ride a motorcycle is one of them.
The only thing that made me nervous about that class is that it always looks like they’re using dirt bikes. Now, I’m sure it’s not actually a dirt bike but whatever it is always looks tall and skinny and appears to have a high center of gravity.
Did they use bikes that were easy to ride for people with no experience?
Actually operaing the motorcycle is the easy part. The hard part is staying mentally ahead of it and all the other drivers on the road. Shifting is easier than a standard car, and you already understand the relationship between clutch, gears, and throttle.
I’ve seen newbs have far more trouble wit directional control than shifting. A lightweight dirt bike can be steered with body english like many folks ride a bicycle. A big bike requires you to learn different techniques. It is not uncommon for new motorcycle riders to find the bike “won’t turn” the first time they really want it to in a stressful situation. Google motorcycle + countersteer for more detail.
Finally, many…even most…motorcylces have pretty temperamental tuning, carbs with manually operated chokes, small batteries, and margional starters. Learning to start a cold (or hot with some bikes) engine with the limited battery (or leg) power available gives many newbs fits.
In my class there were Suzuki cruiser-style motorcycles, and I believe Honda Nighthawk 250s, and for some reason one Yamaha dirt bike. You’d have to have long legs to learn on the dirt bike, one of the first riding exercises they have you do is to “duck walk” the bike in a straight line.
Like control-z said most of the bikes were nighthawk 250’s and we also had 1 Suzuki cruiser type bike.
One of the guys at work had the “it’s too hard to get in” excuse for not taking the class and riding without a motorcycle license. I called in July the year I took it and lucked into getting into the late August session. Someone must have dropped it. My brother was able to get in this past summer so I don’t think it’s impossible, it may just take some persistence. There are other groups that do it as well. There is a group that does it in the parking lot in front of the Pettit Ice Center and I’m pretty sure some of the local H-D dealerships have something. I don’t know if those let you skip the DMV road test though. You’d have to ask them.