tmckeen

Are you interested in techniques that normal people can use, or the kind of bleeding edge stuff Casey Stoner and the like are doing to find that extra little bit at the very top ?

I believe the most common use of the rear brake for a normal track rider would be to help squat the bikes suspension before applying the front brakes, thus reducing the bikes CoG and reducing its tendency to stoppie. I believe I read somewhere recently that Pedrosa uses this technique

So I just got done with a pair of days at Streets in the 110 degree range, no idea what the track temp was but it was HOT, set the Q3's to 32/30 in the morning and they did just fine all day, i could feel them getting a little squirmy in T3 and T8 if I was a little more aggressive with the throttle, but they also were on track days # 5 and 6 for the set. I think unless your tires are telling you somethings wrong your probably over thinking things. Tyler

My best/worst story would be forgetting to put the kickstand down, when I was a good bit younger and a lot dumber I had ridden home from a buddies house, and lets just say my mind was a little "clouded", pulled into the driveway dismounted and started walking towards the door to the house, and BAM !!!! bike's lying on its side in the driveway.

Thats awesome stuff man !!!

The problem is it will most likely end up with TV rights on some obscure channel like MAV TV which had the broadcasts of the SuperBike Shootout this season and to actually watch that channel you need the super top tier cable package with extra sports channels for $$$$, If your cable provider even carries it. I cant justify paying for a premium cable package just to watch some more racing, Online Streaming would have been fine if they had simply posted the online DVR the following day, The Red Bull Rookies Cup makes it work on their website just fine

everyone gets things bassackwards from time to time

This year AMA switched to a online streaming format with a new web service called Fanschoice.tv , the coverage itself wasn't exactly on par with what MotoGP gets, but it was free to watch which was nice. It just always seem like it took them a few weeks to put up a race for online viewing if you couldn't watch the live stream, which was annoying and caused me to lose interest in following the racing this year.

I'm not really sure I get what you mean here, generally speaking lower gearing results in better acceleration, but standing the bike up effectively raises the gearing doesn't it? I know a larger sprocket in the rear lowers your final drive gearing, but increasing the diameter of the drive wheel would result in greater distance being covered per RPM which would be taller gearing would it not ?

That is AWESOME news, I just hope they make watching it a little easier for the fans. I liked the idea of the online streaming, but the execution of it seems lacking. I honestly got tired of waiting for the races to be released for the online DVR and gave up watching AMA altogether this year.

Welcome to the forums Aravind, your for sure going to have a blast out there. Streets is a really fun technical track. I will be out there though I wont be attending the school. If you'd like to say hi I'm pretty easy to spot, Green Van, Blue and Red R6. The weather is looking like low 90's for the weekend so be sure and properly hydrate before hand. although I've got a feeling being from India your used to pretty warm temps anyway. to answer some of your questions, 1: yes you need your own fuel, the track does have gas pumps onsite (credit only) but its rather expensive so bringing your own from a actual gas station is best. You will burn through fuel a bit faster at the track than on the road, I would bet on about a tank and a half for the day. I can sometimes get by on a single tank on my R6 but usually its a tad over one tank, its somewhat dependent on riding style and machine however 2: There is a professional photographer there, If you are certain your going to purchase photos I highly recommend you talk to him in the morning and give him your bike and group #, that way he will give you priority shooting and you'll end up with a few more photos. The school does some video of students for level 3 and at 2 day camps. but aside from that your only chance of video is if a fellow student or perhaps a corner worker with a GoPro ends up behind you for a couple laps. 3: that much commuting will be plenty to scrub in your tires, I routinely scrub in new tires with a few sighting laps and a couple easy laps in the morning Tyler

Welcome to the forums Nick, that's quite a into post, it seems like you've got the right approach to things. I'm pretty sure you'll have a blast at your first CSS experience. Tyler

I have a couple school weekends worth of photos, none of them are of a braking zone, its always mid corner. Perhaps when I'm at Streets in 2 weeks I'll set up my GoPro to film my hardest braking zone and see what it looks like.

This is probably a good place to point out that "Race Plastics" which are made of fiberglass and possibly Kevlar, are much more resilient to damage than stock plastic plastics

It's important to remember that in '68 if Ago binned his MV the factory had all the replacement parts to rebuild or replace it, but in '14 those bikes are priceless classics so I'm sure they aren't pushing as hard on 50-60 year old bikes that cannot be replaced as they would on one the team can rebuild overnight. plus back then the TT was part of the GP circuit so not only was it TT glory, but it was season points for the title I think the only way you can really compare riders of such differing era's is to compare their abilities to those of their peers, clearly Agostini was head and shoulders above everyone else from 68-71 when he won 58 straight races and won the title every year, but while not having the same outright win streak KR SR displayed the same kind of dominance from '78 - '80, or Rossi from '01-'05, or Marquez right now, can we ever really know if Ago would be a better rider than Marquez if they had both been born at the same time? There is no real metric to measure them both by equally, but clearly they both utterly dominated the sport and all the best riders of their era's so we can never truly know who would be better. Tyler

Brakes, outright stopping ability has improved the least of any aspect of motorcycle technology over the past century,

That sux man, I guess now you have a good excuse to get some sweet custom gloves made though. Tyler

Like they all said, Lvl 1 is going to do wonders for sorting out most of the issues you're having, and give you huge insight into how to sort out the rest when combined with some information from ToTW2. If you're signed up for one of the weekend dates I'll be out there doing my normal corner working routine. Feel free to say hi, I'm usually pretty easy to spot

You'd need one of these then ...

Welcome to the forum Las, don't hesitate to jump in and ideas and questions, you never know when a healthy debate on riding techniques will unfold. What got you into motorcycles to begin with ? Tyler

Lol, now that makes a lot more sense

Ktk, I'm not entirely sure what your trying to demonstrate there , and how it applies to the thread, And I believe the relationship between Lean angle and Lateral acceleration is a TAN function so your plot shouldn't be linear

A fair point on the difference between the first three and number 4, although Yellow Ducks response post photo is exactly the same as my original guess. However my point there is how quickly the "common lament" is brushed off with the standard don't worry about it response. Which in many cases is good advice, but not every case. In some cases there is some actual underlying issue that is worth digging into. My guess is that had Hawk postulated his problem in the form of a question about body position it would have been met with a response of show us a photo so we can critique it, but since it was about dragging a knee it got the standard reply of don't worry about it.

So, first off ... EVERYONE should take ANYTHING I say with a grain of salt cause I'm probably not right in the head , that also kinda goes for anything you read on the interwebz though .... I'm not talking about riding at flat out 100% because IMO thats a racing only kind of thing, but I'm not talking about riding at 75% either, I would say I routinely ride at the 90% mark, close enough to my limit to keep things lively but with some margin for error. Robert, you keep bringing up this inexperienced rider point, ( TBH I'm a little confused what you consider to be a inexperienced rider because I wouldn't peg you as a inexperienced rider ), and I'm not sure why, in virtually every post I've stated that I'm NOT talking about inexperienced riders, so perhaps we can keep the focus on a experienced rider who has a few years of riding under his belt and a pace that is in between the intermediate and fast groups at your average track day. Now to try and pull a play from Hotfoots playbook, in the beginning of TWOTW II Keith talks about the various different types of advice a rider is likely to experience at the track, which of those types of advice do these responses to the original post reflect ? 1: Yes, same situation for me. Sounds like you're doing just fine without it so I'd let it leave your mind. 2: ...me too! It's OK, it's really OK and I've been doing this for 14 years. 3: It does not bother me one bit that I'm not scraping my knee on the track through every corner. 4: You need to rotate your hips (and for that matter, your upper body) more into the corner if you want to get your knee down. Based on finally being able to view Hawk's photo, he is using plenty of lean angle, and if he were to maintain that body position and keep adding lean angle till he finally scraped a knee puck, IMO he would be using excessive and borderline dangerous amounts of lean angle to do so. He may think he's sticking his knee way out there, but he's really not, so I think that in this kind of scenario the casual advice of "don't worry about it" or "it will happen" is actually bad advice, he has a body position issue that needs addressing, and addressing that may not only allow him to get his knee down and have a quick and accurate gauge of his lean angle, but it might help sort out some other issues and improve his riding all around. so to add a few more Points to Roberts list from before 4. Lack of knee contact can be due to body position error 5. When used properly the knee puck is a accurate gauge of lean angle 6. Based on Rider and Bike geometry sometimes knee contact is simply not possible Now a couple questions for Robert ( or anyone for that matter ), which might get us a little off topic, How do you break through a mental barrier ? If you never approach your personal "limit" how can you move it ? And if you never encounter your SR's how can you hope to tame them ? If you were able to quickly gauge your lean angle mid corner, would that free up some of your attention span ? If something is consuming a unnecessary portion of your attention while you're riding should you address it, regardless of what IT is ?

It's been too quiet around here anyway That depends on the style of bike, and the layout of the corners and straights before and after the turn, there is no one answer its entirely situational As for your home track Barber, even the pros in AMA Superbike are not knee down in every corner, a quick review of a few laps and there are at least 4 or 5 corners where they don't have enough speed or the layout of the track make it impractical. However with 15 turns the places where you cannot drag a knee are a good bit outnumbered. At Streets, which is plenty tight and technical, its more like 2 or 3 out of 14. Regardless of riding style or technique, the number of corners where you "should" outnumber the ones where you "shouldn't" by a healthy margin. I think you're overcomplicating my question and scenario, and I totally agree that trying to drag a knee just for the sake of dragging a knee, unless theres a cameraman shooting , accomplishes nothing. but the fact remains that if you can use more lean angle you're leaving lap time on the table. It doesn't have to be higher entry speed, you can still use a slow in fast out, but simply turn the bike faster and square up the corner with a steeper lean angle. That is a technique I routinely use at SoW to get the jump on BMW's heading onto the front straight, its more of a U turn than a square though. But if you're going through a average corner, and the mythical "downhill off camber decreasing radius in the rain with loose gravel and sand in the apex" is not a average corner, and you're doing everything right, but you're not using up all your available lean angle, you CAN go faster, you're being held back by mental block, not mechanical limitations. If I can use 10° more lean angle then the next rider I will have a faster lap time. Bottom end of the fast group doesn't strike me as a less experienced rider. I absolutely agree that for a new rider obsessing over and attempting crazy acrobatics on the bike to make knee contact is detrimental. But eventually less experienced riders become experienced riders, and more experienced riders need more tools in their toolbox, and at some point a lean angle gauge is a important tool in that toolbox. Like I said It becomes a reference point. For me, if I have to stick my knee all the way out, it means I could have come in faster, or turned the bike quicker. Stick it out about halfway and I'm right where I wanna be, but if I make knee contact in my "static" position, I'm not in trouble, but I should probably ease off just a tad.