alwayslearning

Tire warming: Weaving is just a dangerous thing to do. Especially after doing most of a lap using normal lines. Suddenly starting to weave at lap's end could cause somone who had determined you ride predictably, and wants to pass you, to slam into you from behind when you suddenly become erratic. You're not going to get any further over than you did going around the corners already, so what's the point of weaving on a straight? I'm all for scrubbing in the whole width of a tire. I've found that just "dipping" the bike a little more in the final stage of a corner, when I can finally see down the upcoming straight works fine. I can also feel for max lean angle the bike can attain this way. It works for some magazine guys. It works for me. Do you think it might work for you?

You can get the bead to seat by bouncing the wheel/tire on the ground really hard. Hole it upright, as it will be when installed on the bike, and slam it into the ground a few times. Rotate the wheel so different spots get hit/pushed onto the rim. Then use a high volume source of air, like from a compressor. A hand pump won't do it. Sportec, or any other modern sport tire, will hold on going as fast as one can go on the street. Don't sweat traction with these babies, they've got more if it than you've got visibility around the curve.

Look not to Sumo wrestlers to learn Fencing. Rather, look to master fencers. NASCAR and F-1 are fundamentally different from pavement motorcycles. Check out what Rossi, either Bostrom brother, or Mladin (for example) are doing for relevent examples of successful pavement motorcycle operation. None of those guys weave on warmup laps. About sticky tires: I bet you really are going fast enough to feel the traction difference. As I understand it, motorcycles are always skittering about a wee bit. We don't notice it most of the time because it's just part of the background noise of riding. The front end, for instance, is always doing a cyclic weave: off to one side, then "auto-correcting" back towards center, which it overshoots and then the cycle happens again. Forever. Or until you hit ice :-) which will cause an instant crash because the traction is gone for the weaving "auto-correction" to happen. Everyone who puts on sticky tires for the first time comes back from whatever ride they next go on and comment about how much difference the tires make. Try it, you'll like it ;-)

I learned a lot by riding my XR100 around in circles. Never straigntening it out, just riding around in circles. Several clockwise, then several counterclockwise. Of course, I was trying various techniques the whole time. Like, add throttle until the back starts spinning then weight the outside peg. Do it again and weight the inside peg. See what happens when more throttle is added to an already sliding back tire. See what happens when I start a slide then hold the throttle steady. Ride around and move forward, backward, inside, outside, hang off the inside, sit upright and lean the bike over underneath me. Go faster and faster until the front slides, then give it gas and see what happens, or hold the throttle steady and see what happens, or shut off and see what happens. After doing that for a while, work on corner entrances by going down a straight and then flicking it in with no brakes faster and faster until the front slides. Experiment with doing different things when that turn entrance front end slide happens, just like when going in a circle. Wear full body armor at all times when doing these exercises, because sometimes you're learning what DOESN'T work. It's a lot less painful and expen$ive to blow it on a little dirt bike than going into eleven at Laguna.

Warming tires by weaving side to side doesn't work and is dangerous. Roadracing World did a detailed test of the weaving trick, and it just doesn't get job done. What DOES work is hard acceleration and hard braking while STRAIGHT UP. Lots more force can be put into the tires with the throttle and brakes than by the dinky amount of side force generated by weaving.