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Gr8Dane

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Gr8Dane last won the day on October 2 2019

Gr8Dane had the most liked content!

About Gr8Dane

  • Birthday 06/02/1959

Previous Fields

  • Have you attended a California Superbike School school?
    No

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    4 hours south of Laguna Seca, 1.5 hours SW of Willow Springs
  • Interests
    RACING! Bikes, cars, airplanes. Build and restore race bikes, race cars and airplanes! Building race engines, coaching, riding.
    Committing random acts of kindness, paying it forward and give thanks and praise to the Lord.

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  1. Emergency braking: Practice, practice, practice. Here's what I do : If you don't have a a helper as mentioned, pick a spot up ahead and see if maximum braking will get you stopped before you get to that spot. Ignore the rear brake. It will just lock up on you and get you sideways in more ways than one. . How do you achieve maximum braking? Practice, practice, practice. Always 'cover' your front brake with 2 fingers. Be aware that if you slam the brakes on, you may lock up your front, and you will be on your ear in no time. Instead, gradually apply increasing pressure. This allows for weight transfer to 'plant' the front tire for maximum adhesion and THEN you can really get on the brakes harder. It's kind of a fluid motion. Here's another shameless BMW plug: These days, all BMW's come with ABS, some of them even have power boosters. My K 1200 GT will stop so hard it feels like running into a wall, withou any risk of locking up the wheels. In race mode the S 1000 RR will brake hard enough to chirp the front tire!
  2. 10 track days on the tires and they don't wear? Sounds like you have old, hard tires! I would guess your tires are at least 2 years old then? Also, your pressures seem kinda low to me, given that you are putting over 600 lbs weight on them. As an example, on the BMW K 1200 the manual calls for 36 front and 42 rear, simply because it is a heavy bike. And I can feel a distinct difference between 36 and 32 psi in the front, at the lower pressure the steering is heavy and sluggish. Your rear tire pressure should not be lower than your front, because you carry more weight on the rear than the front. TWOT says a happy bike has 40/60 weight distribution front/ rear, logic would then dictate higher pressure in rear than front.
  3. And interestingly, if you equip your bike with lighter wheels, such as the BST carbon fiber wheels, it will flick faster due to less gyroscopic force int the wheels. A really abrupt countersteer input will flick the bike much quicker. I really wrestle with the bars on the big heavy K 1200, especially when standing it up on corner exit as I get on the gas. It's loads of fun to man-handle that thing!
  4. I'm surprised you got the tires to slide. Was it a cold day? Or was it a death grip on the bars? The rear slide was due to aggressive throttle input or? What pressure are you running front and rear? Maybe you have too much pressure in the tires? How much is do you weigh and how much does the bike weigh? Tire pressure is directly related to the weight they have to carry.
  5. Looks like a double apex corner? If so, you don't really want to add throttle between the 2 apexes....in any event, judging by the horizon and the still shot's it's a pretty steep angle for him to be adding throttle. He chops the throttle only after realizing he's going sideways. I don't think he had a chance of saving it after that. He could have stood the bike up more before adding throttle, but maybe he was counting on Traction control to over-ride his errant throttle input?
  6. Many riders don't have a conscious understanding of the effects of counter-steering. They do it anyway, because that's what makes the bike change direction. When I encounter a rider who says they do not counter steer, I have a little experiment that's quite the eyeopener: Try riding your bike with your left hand on the throttle....within 5 seconds you will figure out that you have always counter steered!
  7. I think a small animal could have been the culprit, but never did see any evidence. Who knows? Been riding for almost 40 years and that's the first time I have ever had something in-explicable happen. Especially on a bike that's inherently as stable as a rock.
  8. Riding the BMW K 1200 GT down Mulholland a few days ago, after dusk, just cruising, minding my own business, straight line, 50 mph. SMACK! SHAKE, RATTLE & ROLL! Massive tankslapper, right, left, right....dunno what, why or how! Thought for sure I was going down. Bike straightened itself out, I stopped, my left wrist painful from the sudden, twisting impact. Figured I had blown a tire,,,nope, tires fine, pressure fine. I doubled back, checked the road surface, no sand gravel, nothing.....next morning, I check the bike thoroughly....all good, except for scuff marks from my right knee-slider on TOP OF THE TANK! Which would indicate that the bike went from vertical to about 45 degree lean angle and back while my body remained upright. Wheew, that was close! I still don't know what happened, but I have to say I credit loose elbows and no death grip on the bars allowing the bike to correct itself....there's absolutely nothing I could have actively done to save it. Page 46 & 47 of TOWTII pretty much explains the dynamics.
  9. I don't buy this one either. When you are in gear and moving, the whole bike is the flywheel. You would have to pull in the clutch, not merely close the throttle, for the weight of the flywheel to matter. Me neither. A low flywheel weight would make it less likely to lock up the rear wheel. I'm thinking extremely high compression. Snappy throttle response ? Use the gearbox more or lower the gearing and or lose weight
  10. You guys nailed it. There's two camera angles of the high side, the camera shooting uphill shows the rear wheel collapsed all the way up into the the tailcone, and when the pick the bike up, you can see the rear wheel flopping back and forth. Probably linkage failure. Inexcusable in my opinion....
  11. Rewind the tape and watch what really happened. Ben didn't cause the high-side--he knows not to get on the gas hard in the corkscrew, yet the bike stepped out from under him. Viciously so. The tape tells the story. It's fairly obvious, yet none of the commentators caught it...so, what happened?
  12. Crazy acitvities? Stunters. Standing on the seat facing backwards going down the freeway. While playing with your Iphone, taking video's. No thanks! I'd rather jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Actually do that on a regular basis. After it has rolled to a complete stop and prop isn't turning, that is.....
  13. GOLDWING tire tester : 180 lbs on back ? His wife/GF isn't that BIG! LOL
  14. Hmmm, maybe I should get round to bolting up that turbo that's been sitting on the shelf......
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