tmckeen

After spending 2 days at Streets methodically working though the schools suspension drill worksheet I came to the grand conclusion that the clickers and adjusters on my stock shock do absolute diddly squat, so I I didn't do anything to the bike other than switch the tires. I was running them at pretty low pressure, 20 PSI hot in the rear based on advice from a coach in the pits, so they should have flattened out pretty good. The tires have 4 Code RACE days on them already so they were plenty scrubbed in and were hooking up well in my previous session and for all of the session leading up to the crash. The tread on the right side of the tire was almost down too but not flush with the wear bars so I don't feel like they were "shot" either. Like I said, it happened very quick with no warning or feedback so I have very little data to go on, but I'm pretty sure the cause was the rider and not the machinery. I'm not sure how you guys do things but here in SoCal unless your a "Transport" that's just one less person who needs relief. I would have been really bummed if I had cost everyone their Bar for the day though.

Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure. Obviously, I did something different on that lap because bikes don't just crash on their own but without some DAQ info to review, or video footage to look / listen too I can't say for sure. I didn't feel like I did anything different that lap. Didn't get any feedback from the bike before it happened, and couldn't really say if I lost the front or rear first. I talked it over with a few coaches throughout the day but couldn't nail down any major specific cause. The things I do know for sure is that I lost the bike at the very crest of the turn, I went back to look for some missing hard parts and inspected the crash marks on the pavement. It was the end of a session and I had already completed a few laps at pace, so my tires were warmed up. I had switched from Q3's to GPA-Pro's that morning, so I was using a different, but better, tire than I had the previous 3 days. Perhaps I was just a little tense on the inside bar and when the front got light I made a unwanted steering input, or perhaps I just turned the bike too much based on the tire change that morning. I'm just not sure, I know I did something, but nothing sticks out as something I majorly screwed up.

Sadly I suffered some major contusions and bruising to my ego, and considerable hemorrhaging to my bank account, and I cut my knee loading the bike back into the trailer. This is why I push myself on the track and not the street, I was able to dust myself off walk away from what would have been a MAJOR accident on a public roadway with nothing more than torn up leathers. Turn 3 at "The Ridge Motorsports Park" I'm using the upper part of 3rd gear there so I'm guessing its 60+ mph corner

So , perhaps its too soon but, "Team 3 and 2 Half Fingers "

It's interesting timing with this thread, as I just happened to crash my bike on this exact kind of corner last week. From my experience I can add that the margin for error on this kind of corner is less than on most other corners, and the feedback that you might normally get as you approach the traction limits of the bike will be reduced or nonexistent.

I do that on purpose when a cage driver is riding my ass, make it look like the bikes about to throw me off or loose a wheel and they suddenly leave a reasonable amount of following distance

Man , that is one lucky dude, I did notice the Throttle rule being quoted in the comments section though

I think the basic point he's trying to make with this article, and it actually kinda lines up with the curriculum at CSS, is that there's a place for using lots of "body English" and there's a place where it isn't really needed. If your only using 20-30 degrees of lean angle anything you might gain from massively hanging off the bike could be done much easier by simply using a few more degrees of lean angle. But if your using 40-50 degrees of lean and your dragging hard parts, the only way to go faster is to use more "body English". If your a beginner or new to the track, "getting off the bike" isn't the first thing you want to focus on, in much the same way CSS doesn't really work on it till level 3-4, there are lots of other fundamentals that you should focus on that will net you much more gain. Tyler

the most important thing is not to heat up brand new pad/rotor and then stop with it hot, you will end up with a melted pad spot on your rotor that will result in a nasty pulse in your brakes Upgrading to a Dot 5.1 or race type fluid can help if you're experiencing brake fade after a few high spirited laps, but its not a silver bullet, I used to have considerable troubles with the brakes on my R6 and upgraded pads and fluid and rebuilt the Master trying to snuff them out, they all helped a little but eventually I just bought a RCS-19 master cylinder and that was the silver bullet to my problems.

Its amazing just how much the bike moves around and the head shake that he rides through like it isn't even there

The schools rental equipment covers a BROAD range of rider sizes, I'm quite confident they will have something you'll fit in

Do you have stainless lines ? How old is your fluid ? Have you upgraded your brake fluid ?

Lots of people believe ( incorrectly ) that the CSS curriculum does not include trail braking and that it teaches students not to trail brake ever. This is not the case, but IMO braking techniques isn't something the school really delves into in any of the first 3 school levels so I can see the confusion here. The school and Keith's books discuss trailing off the brakes as you turn the bike in to keep the suspension happy and prevent the pogo effect that would occur if you released from hard braking right before you tried to flick the bike into a corner. Trailing the brakes all the way to the apex isn't a technique for a beginner rider, and since CSS is a riding school and not just a racing school their curriculum is geared towards all manner of riders with a huge range of skill sets, so things like trailing the brakes deep into the corner and backing the bike into corners aren't on the syllabus for the normal school day. However if you're ever going to set a new lap record or win even a club championship I'm fairly confident you will need to be comfortable trailing the brakes deep into the corner, depending on the situation and the corner, and the tires your using it may be the fastest way or it may allow you to make a pass etc. etc. I'm also fairly confident that you're not going to win a Moto 2 championship without the ability to "back it in" pretty aggressively from time to time, perhaps not every corner all the time, but its a skill you need to have to compete at that level, but it's not something every track rider needs to learn to turn a quick lap, or have a good time. To put it another way, you can have plenty of fun on a ice skating rink without knowing how to perform a triple lutz, but if you wanna win a figure skating contest you should probably have that in your back pocket. Slight rear brake application before heavy braking will help to squat the bike, lower the COG and allow you to brake harder. I would also clasify this as a more advanced technique as it adds a extra step to concentrate on, but when you're looking for that extra few tenths on your lap and you need to brake just that much harder it's a viable option. With regards to the "dead time" how soon after your steering input do you get back on the gas ?

I'm gonna have to disagree on a few points, Properly bedding in brake pads transfers a thin layer of pad material to the rotor itself that improves stopping power and heat transfer and the like. The results of not properly bedding in new pads can be found in numerous sources on the interwebz. When switching to a different pad compound its a good idea to clean the rotors of existing pad material. This can be done pretty easily with some emery cloth and a balancing stand to spin the tire on. The dealer I purchased my race pads from included a foam sanding block to clean the rotors as a free gift. I wipe down my rotors with Acetone prior to installation any time the wheel comes off the bike to remove any oils or dirt that it may have picked up while I was working on it. Not all wheel speed sensors work on a optical sensor, the ABS system in my FJR detects wheel speed from a "Hall Effect" sensor, I'm pretty sure this will be the more common design on anything that doesn't have a race calibration option for its traction control and ABS systems. Tyler

My FJR has linked ABS, and I'm not a fan, it makes the braking on the front uneven, my front calipers have 8 pistons but only 6 are linked to my brake lever so the braking force differs from rotor to rotor and the pad wear is very uneven for the set of pistons that are linked to the rear brake. Also upgrading to stainless lines is impossible cause there are so many hoses going in and out of everywhere. Unless I'm riding in the rain I much prefer the traditional brakes on my previous street bike or track bike to the ones on my FJR. While the system is asjustable on the S1000RR ( with the purchase of a specific add-on ) the system on mine is not adjustable at all, I can't disable it or change the ABS threshold. You end up having to learn to brake at the threshold of the ABS sensor, not the threshold of your available traction. Tyler

I was speaking in more genral terms addressing Eirik's comment about speed reducing avaliable lean angle. It's been addressed many times on these forums how the aparant visual angle of a motorcycle is not the same as the effective cornering angle due to changes in CoG and tire width and the like. However all things being the same, IE Same bike lean, same body position and CoG, 1G of cornering force at 40 is the same as 1 g or cornering force at 140. So if you can achieve 50° of lean at 40 you can achieve the same amount of lean at 140 There is a minimum speed threshold for any given lean angle, in much the same way there is a given stall speed for a given bank angle on a airplane, however I'd bet its considerably lower than you think, easily demonstrated by various Moto Gymkhana videos and riders practicing dragging knees in parking lots at slow speed. Nothing works quite the same in practice as it does in theory, but I still disagree with the generality of that statement. If it were true than Marquez cornering at 62° with his elbow down around a slow corner would generate considerably less G force than the same thing through a very high speed one, which I'm pretty sure telemetry on the bike will show is not the case. My best guess is that the test riders in this scenario were doing circles in a garage, with considerable counter-weighting of the bike and achieved a 50° lean angle but were cornering with less than the G forces a bike would generate at 50° without a rider on it, and then when moving to higher speeds they stopped counter-weighting the bike and were no longer able to achieve the same 50° lean angle because the CoG of the bike had changed and the G force generated at 50° had increased. The compression of the suspension mid corner of a steady state turn is due entirely to the load factor of the vehicle, and the calculations for determining that have nothing to do with speed, cornering at 1G is the same regardless of your rate of forward motion. I'm sure there are some other forces at play that reduce the traction available at much higher speeds, like perhaps at a high enough rate of speed the tire cannot deform to match imperfections in the tarmac on a microscopic level fast enough and your available traction becomes reduced etc.

I have to disagree with you on this point Eirik, the cornering forces generated by a 60° lean angle will be the same at 40 and 140, the difference will be the radius of the resulting line

This is one of the areas where I find some Dirt riding to be VERY beneficial, becoming comfortable on a dirt bike and getting used to just staying loose and letting it do its thing makes riding over seams and the like on the track a complete non issue. On the dirt it seems like no matter how out of shape my back tire is as long as I stay on the gas and don't tense up, it sorts itself out, which translates directly to the track.

IMO, if at a given track, rider A does 1:30-1:32 seconds lap times on a high end street tire and rider B does 1:45-1:50 lap times on a DOT race or Slick tire, Rider B is wasting his/her money, I see at lot of new to the track riders come out as friends of corner workers at SoW, and they invariably get around to the question about what kind of tires to run, and my advice is always the same, Start with high end street tires, Q3's or Pilot Power 3 etc, and stick with them until the tire is actually holding you back. Skipping directly to DOT race or slick tires makes it much harder to become attuned to what the tires are telling you. Progressing through the performance of a street tire till the point you are overriding it gives you important lessons in tire feedback and what approaching the limit of traction feels like. Personally I can feel the difference in tire performance drop off on my Q3's as they near the end of their track life. Accidents aren't cheap , but a few sets of street tires and some training will prevent a lot more accidents then a few sets of really expensive grippy tires will. And developing a better feel for your traction will serve you much better in the long run.

I think in the pic of Rossi he is cheating a little due to the curbing and road camber Ruggi looks like he has his ass hung way off but his head still looks to be over the tank, and his elbow is stuck out a lot more compared to Marq, but yes surprisingly similar

They same way you tell any premium brand from a non premium brand. I think Tires are kinda like Oil, some people swear by a particular brand, and different tests show one to be better here or there, but it all pretty much does the same job. I really like the Q3's but that's mostly based on the price I get them for through the school. The performance is top notch, and I routinely pass guys on DOT Race or Full Slicks out at Streets Of Willow on them, but I'm fairly sure I could do the same on the comparable offering from Pirelli or Michelin.

This will vary based on the rules of the organization or club you are racing with. If your seriously considering club racing you should download a copy of the rule book for the club / org you are going to compete with and read it front to back 3 or 4 times

It's some interesting data for sure, but I don't buy this statement. You were upright, experienced a debris induced bunny hop and your wheels lost contact with the ground for a split second. What did the electronics actually do in the fraction of a second that the bike was airborne that made the situation less dramatic ? How much different could it possibly have been without electronics? I find it VERY hard to believe that in the time you were airborne, even with WOT your wheel speed would have increased enough to cause a issue when you landed. I 100% agree with Hotfoot's statement about riding through it with good technique and I'd bet money that all of your schooling at CSS is what made this a not so dramatic situation. The electronics are impressive, and you can no doubt show all kinds of data where the step in and save a rider from himself, I just don't think this is a example of that. Tyler

Sure you do, then you can start renting them out to people like me

I'm not sure about Harry's as I don't have a iPhone, but I know RaceChrono ( a different app based lap timer ) lets you use a external blue tooth GPS receiver you can mount to the bike, giving you the accuracy of dedicated GPS devices with your cell phone and a somewhat reduced cost compared to the full on lap time / DAQ system. My experience with cell phone GPS lap times is that they are a rough estimate at best.