johnnyrod

On older bikes I've made a few tweaks, but my current one is also an SV650 and as said above, the stock suspension is pretty crude. Damper rod forks up front, I too have gone for stiffer springs and emulators, though I still find the rebound damping a bit limited. The OE springs aren't any good even for my miserable 140lb (naked) so they're worse than useless for anyone else. I've gone for progressive springs but am going to switch to linear ones later this year, but the change from stock made a big difference. At the back I eventually raided the piggy bank for an Ohlins shock, which has transformed it. I'm not a very confident rider, but who cares how much extra grip I really have, it feels like I have a LOT more. As said above, the net result is a bike that seems to ride like a magic carpet over things. Even stock suspension can be set up well or badly, and the difference is pretty clear. Get it right and it's the best thing in the world, ever.

Hi James, not many fellow limeys on here! As said above your BP looks pretty good, there are plenty of threads on here but really having the instructor in front of you for a conflab cannot be replaced. As Hotfoot says, try locking on with your outside leg (foot and knee hence the Stomp grips) so you can have a nice light touch on the bars, and try gettign your ass back and body a little flatter/more weight over the front as you are mainly hanging off straight outwards and so getting your knee down with plenty of space under the peg. Anyway yes Silverstone is great for CSS, if you need a B&B nearby then I can recommend a couple, the day is long and you need your brain in gear, but you'll love it.

It's more a lifestyle choice I'm back there for part 2 this Friday the 9th August if anyone else is around?

Bit late I know but I just returned to the forum! I've been talking a friend of mine through sorting his 954 suspension, he's a similar weight to you. As you say the fork springs are stupidly soft. Once these were replaced and a new back shock in (Nitron from the UK), and sag set again, it was a lot better. He still had some trouble with running wide, but dropping the yokes down the forks fixed it. He did this about 18mm, I haven't seen it yet but I think it's about as far as he could go. This made the steering a lot more neutral, thought you may be interested.

These are all UK tracks... Cadwell Park: Like a rollercoaster made of tarmac. Medium-speed, with quite a range of corners from braking-is-for-wimps Coppice to the mainly-blind run onto Park Straight. Plus of course the Mountain, where you wheelie just about anything. Mallory: Slower track but has the longest right-hander you've ever seen. Paddock is in the middle so you have to get in and out between sessions. Not desperately technical. Oulton Park: much like Cadwell in that it's a technical, medium-speed rider's circuit. Rockingham: Massive oval with twisty slow infield. Inernational cofiguration uses a bit of the oval as well (making it medium speed), National only the infield. Very wide, grippy, front-endy, ideal for a first outing, lots of fun on a smaller bike where you can take some scalps. Rubbish for spectators though, you can't get near anything interesting. Silverstone: Various configurations. Stowe is fairly simple and fine for CSS but I wouldn't go there for a track day. Southern (now International) I'll be riding tomorrow, went there for CSS L2 some years ago. Wide and fast is the best way to describe most of Silverstone I think.

I'm there in the inters, just booked last night. Noisy blue SV650. Anyone else going?

For me it's the bite-size training (sa said above), which is something you also do in martial arts. You practice one thing, slowly, then the speed and complicated stuff follows by itself. After that it's practice, not purely time, but practice and experimentation, to drive home what you're trying to learn. Natural talent would be nice! But you did ask how to become good at something, not just to be good at it.

I'm getting some Stomp grips next week. After doing L3 during the summer, it's difficult to lock on with the outside knee as the tank is too slippery (old SV650). Before then I just leaned on the outside peg so it didn't matter, hence no Stomps.

Lots of threads on here about countersteering, but in a nutshell... there are three main parts to what happens: 1. bike upright (straight line), turn bars the wrong way (countersteer), the bike falls towards the bend 2. stop countersteering, front end turns slightly into the bend by itself (geometry, tyre profile etc.), lean angle stabilises 3. bike goes round the corner. The force of gravity that would normally make it fall over is now being used to change your direction. Leaning makes you go round corners. Countersteering changes the lean angle (up or down) and should be quick and positive. Gyro forces make it all harder work at higher speed.

It's a busy day so if you ride etc. at the same times it's good, otherwise you'll really only see each other at lunchtimes. Same coach or not is up to you, for the riding sessions you'll be on different parts of the track at any one time anyway, regardless of whether you share a coach or not, unless you deliberately try to ride around together which will banjo your concentration anyway. The only time you'll be together with the same coach is the debrief afterwards. It's useful for all three or so riders to be there at once as we all have differetn things to work on and look at things different ways. Again if your wife is in that group or not is really up to you, part of the value of these discussions is hearing people talking about things from an angle you've not thought of. Best to speak to the school beforehand to make sure it's arranged the way you want it, I'm not sure how easy or welcome changes on the day are. They're a very helpful buch but there are a lot of them and they need to be well organised. You'll have a great time, there are no stupid questions, it's a really nice atmosphere.

Yes a new back shock isn't any better than the original, but if the one you've got isn't working so well, it'll be a big improvement. I'd still say save your money on buying new discs and all that, put it towards the new bike (someday). Changing parts can give you a few percent advantage here and there, even changing to a much more powerful bike will give you a few seconds a lap (see Eirik's post above), maybe not even that on a slow track. Time in the saddle and money spent on training will pay much bigger dividends. If money was no object then yeah go and buy anything you want, but then we wouldn't have this thread! At least put off your buying decision until you've spent a little bit of time on track to help clarify your thoughts. As you may have already seen, track days seem to be a blur these days of motorhomes and tyre warmers, spandex undersuits, shiny things and cryptic adjustments. Reality is you could ride up on your bike, take off the indicators, cane it round all day, then ride home again with as big a grin on your face. The shiny stuff is nice but it doesn't change things so much. That's my 2p/2c/2 roubles etc.

that means $! A secondhand shock with low miles should be around $100 maybe? I don't know what prices are like over there. Yeah then it's "what will it be next" but that's the trade-off with having an older bike, they need a bit more looking at but are cheaper. Your shock may not be that bad but I'd be surprised if it was much good by now, even though this seems like piffling mileage when compared to a car.

It's worth spending a few bucks on braided lines, the two-line setup with a double banjo at the master cylinder. At 30k miles the back shock is probably pretty worn out, even a replacement OE second hand low mileage one would be a good move and wouldn't cost much. As for the other stuff, soundbs liek you've pretty much worked your way through it. If it's running okay then I'd say just get out there and ride it, provided it basically works then you'll find (a) many more things in your riding to occupy your thoughts and ( if you sling it down the road sometime you'll be a bit less precious about it being really perfect. I guess I could add a © whicih is that i made most of the changes to my bike after I started track days because i found the forks were soft, the shock was ######, the top end was a bit lacking, etc. so as these issue emerged I looked at them. That's the other reason I'd say get on it, you'll soon find out which bit to fiddle with next!

I would echo the thoughts above and add a bit. You sound like you can ride alright but your level of experience is still a bit low as you say, to be jumping on a litre bike and wringing its neck. For sure the vavavoom of a big bike is fun but after a while even a big one won't feel so quick in a straight line, but it's all about corners when it comes to racing. So don't assume that it's a natural progression to a bigger bike, it's way more important that you have a bike that suits you, regardless of the engine size. If you're worried about cash then you could think about just getting a fairly stock bike for now. These days even the OE stuff is pretty impressive*, and the key is getting the setup right in terms of handling, because it can be very right or very wrong just for some twiddling. As far as tuning goes, a noisy pipe and setup are nice but it's not going to give you massive gains, VFM for that has always been to buy a bigger bike. Try your first track day. For me it was an eye-opener, in truth it's not what you've got but how you ride it. Since then I've been blown into the weeds by a 125 with no fairing, and out-dragged bigger bikes like a ZX-9 and TL1000 on my SV650 with its uber-manly 80bhp*. Get bike, ride bike, figure it out later, have fun now. Track riding isn't cheap anyway so your worries about losing money by changing bikes are somewhat diminished. Ramble over! *OE R6 that is, the SV neeed bit of tickling to compete!

I'm with this I think!

Until you get the hang of blipping the throttle when changing down using the clutch, I wouldn't start yet on clutchless downchanges (which I personally don't like anyway). get it right and you can be pretty quick anyway to be honest. Check your throttle cable slack, too much and you have to exaggerate the blip to get the engine to pick up appreciably. It really is only a small, quick bit of gas that's needed.

As said in another post recently, if you're turning while braking so hard the back wheel is more or less weightless, you're asking a lot of the front tyre. You can probably guess what happens next!

That's what quick turns are for! You have to move your turn-in point a bit to make it work but yes, less lean angle for the same bend (so possibly more speed as the next change) is what you're trying for.

I'd also say the same about Level 2, but not Level 3

Had a great day on Saturday, although it lashed it down all morning, particularly hard mid-morning, standing water all over the track. Ideal for practicing pivot steering on a slow track... or not. Dried up in the afternoon though. Met a young lad called Joe Francis, was tearing it up on a 125 race bike. My knees are a bit stiff now, maybe some stomp grips could help that out. My brain was also fried trying to keep up, but by the end of the day I think I was on the ball. Been there, done that, got mugged for two t-shirts by the nice girl on the merchandise stand when I was only going to get one, oops. Good to see everyone again, pity no Ibbo this time, guess I'll be saving my pennies up again!

A lot of the stuff in Level 1 is fundamental and the instructors are unpicking bad habits already learned, so I guess you're not in a bad place to go early before the wrong things have become ingrained.

BLSJDS is right, you need to shift your focus from the turn-in RP to the apex RP sooner, this is called the 2-step and separates steering from looking. Your turn-in RP is only useful up to a pointm and as you apporach it you can move your vision to look for the apex RP, but keep your turn-in RP in your peripheral vision. This drill tries to prevent you doing what you are doing whch is hanging on to the turn-in RP too long. The other thing is, your turn-in RP doesn't match the rate at which you're getting the bike leaned over. You need to move it back a bit, there isn't one perfect line to follow, so you may be turning-in in a different place to other people but it's the right one for you.

You do get a booklet but it's mostly space for notes, so make sure you use it! Best thing to do is write down what your instructor talks to you about, as these are the bits of the drills etc. that are most important to you. My advice for homework is book a track day a couple of weeks afterwards and put it into pratice.

Wongster I think it's all down to reference points (RPs) and your rate of turn-in as outlined above. In reply to your original post: 1. You're turning in too late for your speed, or to put it another way, too slow for the lateness of your turn-in point, and... 2. You've lost track of your RPs, if you had any, or they're no good 3. Thanks to 1 and 2 you've made your bed and are now lying in it. You should be using the throttle control rule as soon as you've made your turn-in, so you are in control of the grip at both ends of your axe, i.e. controlled roll-on all the way through. The whole thing about turning in quickly, at the right point on the track, is key, by analogy with braking, the harder you brake, the less time you spend doing it and the more time you spend off the brakes beforehand (=quicker). The good news is that this is the sort of thing the guys at CSS see all the time, and it's all addressed in Level 1. For now: Choose a turn-in point and use it each lap. Concentrate on leaning the bike over as quickly as possible You'll find your apex becomes earlier as you are now corning tighter. Move your turning point deeper and/or increase your entry speed to balance it out. Bit wordy, sorry, hope it helps to clarify

I thought backing it in was done with the rear brake, as you can control that, you can't really control engine braking. By extension, the slipper clutch is useful because you can't control engine braking.