sjanzeir

I'm fixing to join a local motorcycle riding training course one of these days and was wondering how conducive it would be to switch my bike's brakes between sides. Will it help to condition my muscle memory to have the front brake lever on the right side of the handlebar and flatten the learning curve somewhat? I should note that I'm a complete noob who's never ridden a motorcycle of any type, ever.

bargainguy

Are you right-handed? The danger of using motorcycle-style brake routing is that if you connect the front brake to the right brake lever, you might do an endo if you use the front brake only to stop.

You can alleviate this somewhat by always engaging both brakes, not just the front. But the danger is there. Someday you might forget, use the right brake only, and oopsy-daisy.

t2p

If you will be riding both motorcycles and bicycles I recommend front brake on right side

TiHabanero

You are overthinking this. The brain knows when it is on a bicycle or a motorcycle and does indeed remember the differences in the controls.
Don't fear the motorbike. That fear will translate to errors.

csport

Sheldon Brown's article on the subject.
Jan Heine's article.
I have the front brake on the right.

biker128pedal

Don’t bother. Especially if you have hydraulic brakes. Go take the beginners motorcycle course. Take one that provides the bikes. Smaller 100cc to 250cc. I’d only practice tight figure eights on the bicycle before hand. And balance sitting.

That reminds me I should go take a refresher.

john m flores 

I had the same concern when I started riding motorcycles but I have no issue with hopping off the motorcycle and then going for a bicycle ride. The mind figures it out pretty quickly.

Enjoy the motorcycle class - the more you know the better it gets!

Jeff Neese

Considering that the rear brake on a motorcycle is operated with your right foot, there's very little chance of confusing your muscle memory.

Just like on a motorcycle, you should train yourself to use both brakes on your bicycle simultaneously, always. Even if you're just slowing down a little, always use both brakes. Then when you need to do a panic stop it will be automatic muscle memory to grab both. They will probably teach you that in your motorcycle class, for the same reason.

Also, just as with a motorcycle, it's a good idea to actually practice panic stops. When something pulls out in front of you is not the time to learn how your bike and your body respond under hard braking. A lot of accidents happen not because the brakes couldn't stop in time, it's because of the loss of control when you slam on the brakes and aren't prepared for the shift of body weight and sudden deceleration. A few dry runs of a simulated panic stop are invaluable, on both motorcycles and bicycles.

Steel Charlie

I've had/have the front brake on the right on every bike I own for 40+ years. My meager brain never has to adjust to anything.

sjanzeir

bargainguy Yes, I am right-handed, but I do tend to use my front brake (with my left hand) more than my rear, pretty much for everything from aiding turning to outright stopping.

biker128pedal I took off the hydraulics and ran a pair of mechanicals earlier this month and switched the cables for a RF/LR setup, and I must say everything felt... about the same, if I'm being perfectly honest. I was surprised how fast I was able to get used to having my brakes backwards. The reason I'm asking is what you said - switching my hydraulics is, shall we say, a little more involved (and a little more permanent) than just swapping cables.

t2p Even if I do finish the course, take (and pass) the DMV test and have my motorcycle license in hand, it's going to be a while before I start thinking about getting a motorcycle for various considerations - the cost of keeping both a vintage French car and a vintage motorcycle on the road being one concern (there's a good number of old Virago 250s for sale locally, but my ideal choice would be a 535, which is extremely rare to find locally); not having a suitable place to park a motorcycle is another major concern...

TiHabanero I'm known around this forum for overthinking everything, and this is just the latest Overthinking Totally Normal Thing of the Week for me 😁

t2p

Ninja 250 or similar an option ?

small / lightweight / good handling / good brakes - just enough horsepower to make it interesting but not too much to get you into trouble ... and in many areas the (small) displacement will place you into an affordable insurance category

t2p

long time motorcycle rider (primarily off road) - only occasional bicycle rider until early 90’s when I got into bicycling (to get into better shape for motorcycling)

every bike was set up with front brake on the right (including road bikes ; picture above)

99% of the long time motorcycle riders I rode bicycles with also had front brake on right side ... I believe there might have been one exception

only recently am I now riding bikes with front brake on the left ... primarily because I now rarely ride a motorcycle ... and I’m too lazy to switch the brakes ... this does allow others including mrs t2p to ride my bikes ...

big john

I rode motorcycles first and like t2p I started riding bicycles on road to get in better shape for off-road motorcycling. This was never an issue for me and I always kept my bicycles with front brake left. I know some people switch them but I never considered it.

I drove manual transmission cars for years and when I would get into an automatic I would reach my foot for the clutch when stopping.

nomadmax 

I'm a lifelong cyclist and motorcycle rider (over 55 years in the saddle). I have bikes that have downtube shifting, Shimano STI & Campag ErgoPower that I never miss a beat on when going between them (left lever front brake). Additionally, I have a Harley Davidson and a Suzuki motorcycle that have completely different turn signal and horn controls. The Harley has absolutely no safety interlocks for the side stand or clutch but the Suzuki does. The Harley is carbed/petcock and the Suzuki is FI, both require different proceedures for starting and ending rides. I said all that to say this; if you can't adapt to the difference of controls between a bicycle and a motorcycle, you shouldn't be riding one.

sjanzeir

😅 I'm still too fat for the sport bike riding position!

That said, as far as sport bikes go, I've seen quite a few used 250 Zooks for sale but no 250 Ninjas; all the Ninjas I've seen posted up locally were 400 and up - most of them 600s and higher.

The reason I say vintage Virago is because I'm a bit of an automotive atavist - I have more faith in points and carburetors than ECMs and by-wires (as I said earlier, my daily driver is a 1982 Peugeot 504 wagon.) Plus, Viragos are plentiful, and by all accounts are quality, highly customizable machines that can be anything and everything anyone wants them to be.

sjanzeir

Same here - my Peugeot's air conditioner has been broken since late last year and a couple of months ago, I had to be somewhere for a one-day gig and had to look presentable, so driving the 504 in a dress shirt and tie with the windows down in 105F heat was out of the question, so I rented a 2023 Geely Emgrand, and the first thing I did getting behind the wheel was kick the floorboard with my left foot looking for the clutch 😁

dedhed

My problem having an old Triumph with RH shift is getting on someone else's MC and thinking I'm down shifting and hitting the rear brake.

Pop N Wood

Don't European bikes generally put the front brake on the right?

I know chain reaction cycle often specifies brake sets in either configuration.

sjanzeir

The set of Shimano brakes I had bought for the Hemingway late 2021 were from before the J-kit days and came fully assembled and pre-bled as FL/RR, so that was that. Now that same set resides on my rarely used Jetstream. The second set I bought for the Hemingway earlier this year was J-kit, but I didn't have the forethought to assemble it as a FR/RL setup because I'm a dumbass.

indyfabz

If I have been riding the road bike for a while and then take out the touring bike, I will often try to shift as if the touring bike has brifters instead of bar ends. The opposite often happens when I go the other direction. I will reach down for the bar ends while riding the road bike. It always makes me chuckle. I almost exclusively happens when I got to shift for the first time. Then the brain adjusts.

chaadster

Gee, maybe I’m a freak, but even two decades after getting rid of my moto, I’m still confounded by which hand operates which brake on which bicycle.

I had, for several years, always run right-front, but I stopped bothering switching over pre-built bikes at some point, but kept doing bikes I built right-front. Sometime later, I stopped doing that because I couldn’t remember which bike was setup how, and I remain confused to this day, with a mixed-setup stable of 10 bikes.

Honestly, it’s very rare that it’s an issue while riding on the road, but for MTB and other styles, it’s super important to know what’s what instinctively, so I giess my advice would be not to do what I did, and either go all in forever more and set up every bike right-front, or don’t switch bikes at all and just get used to moto.

I agree that having the moto be the “odd bike out” is not hard to adapt to; I rode my buddies Triumph moto the other day, and it was “like riding a bike,” everything came right back to me despite it being almost 15 years since riding a moto.

icemilkcoffee 

On a road bike you would jam on both brakes at the same time regardless. So it doesn't really matter which side you put which brake.
On a motorcycle you should jam on the rear brake one split second before the front brakes. That way you squat both the front and rear suspension.

jon c. 

When I used to ride motorcycles and bicycles I never thought twice about the difference, It was just natural.

Oddly, when driving a car or truck I always have a momentary pause as I try to shift in whatever manner that last vehicle I drove was shifted. But brakes I never think about.

RB1-luvr

as jon c. said. i rode motorcycles for 35 years and never thought about it.

Buzzkill53120

I’ve ridden both motorcycles and bicycles and never had a problem switching from one to another. Having said that, I almost dumped my friends vintage BSA 650 due to the rear brake being on the left side.