[Phlipper]

Oh and .... once you're comfortable you can usually double the posted curve speeds without dragging. Gotta learn how to get on one cheek. Learn how to keep the bike as upright as possible. A track weekend outa be mandatory for everyone. You'll learn more about riding than you thought there was to know.

 

[dfresh]

Why push it? If you "hot rod", eventually you'll fail. Just enjoy life with all your limbs intact... but that's just me.

I‘m with you. If I wanted to do all that I would have gotten a sport bike and have done it when I was 20 years younger. Course I’d probably be dead now too cause I didn’t have the self discipline back then but sometimes it pays to know thine own self 😏

 

[Charlie Chaplain]

Watch out for the dreaded tar snakes, they squiggle all over the road, and are a slippery way to find out how well your tires stick. Besides the painted lines, these can cause your tires to slide easily.
‘When going into a turn, look ahead to where you want to go, not at the outer shoulder, nor at any cars or obstacles. Your bike will go where you look… when I was at Pitt Race, Nelson Ledges, or Mid Ohio, this was the best way to get around the track and still be upright.
Charlie

 

[JustinAZ]

It’s all body positioning. I hang it out in corners with my Challenger, but I’ve been riding for 30+ years and a lot of that was on sport bikes on street and track. It’s all body positioning. The bike will take it, it’s the rider that messes it up. Especially on decreasing radius corners. Just watch what fast riders do. Just cuz you’re on a cruiser doesn’t mean the physics are different.

 

[bigbadvoodoodady_1]

I take some pretty serious corners on this bike doing 80-90 mph I am going to have to replace my exhaust soon as I'm almost scraped clean through my pipes. This bike can handle hard cornering at speed, with that said any type of road hazard such as loose gravel or sand and you dont have the seating position you do on a sport bike to maybe regain control from a small slide at those speeds. So it can absolutely corner at speed just know the risk you are taking.

So my question is... since I'm coming off a sports bike, are there clutch and break sets that allow for more of a lean angle? (Already got an aftermarket exhaust that won't scrape)

 

[bigbadvoodoodady_1]

I've never personally seen it, but I've heard stories. A good buddy of mine had never ridden a motorcycle in his life but his sister and father were both "bikers". I'm sure I regularly put more miles on my bike in a weekend than they would over several years. They're the "bikers" who ride a few days a year and run down to the beach to hit a bar all decked out in their leathers.

He came into work one day and was talking about how hard it is to steer and turn motorcycles.
What are you talking about? It isn't difficult at all. Did you buy a bike or something?
I didn't buy one. My sister is moving and I rode her motorcycle to her new house.
😡 You're alive so I guess you did ok. Dude, riding around here, not knowing what you're doing is incredibly stupid but whatever, what was so difficult about turning though?
Just having to lean that far off the bike to get it to turn was hard. Her bike is so big, even to change lanes I had to lean way off.
You don't "lean off the bike" to turn, you counter steer and it's easy as could be.
No you don't. My sister said to just lean off the bike and it would steer.
🤨 No... Dude. Do me a favor and please don't get on a bike without taking some lessons and having a little knowledge on how a bike works.
So how do YOU steer?
It's all counter steering. You always look in the direction you want to go, you begin every turn away from the direction you want to go which leans the bike and then you balance in the turn. If you need to turn sharper, you have to push the bars away from the turn. If you want to turn right, initially you have to steer left. If you need to turn tighter, push the right side of the bars, turning farther left, which is now relative since the bars should be slightly right but we're getting in the weeds now...
And that's when a multiple hour debate started on how motorcycles work. Me, who has owned and raced Ducati's, has a touring motorcycle and rides around 15,000 a year versus 2 guys from NYC who, combined has around 10 miles total under their belt.

Even after showing them video after video proving them wrong, the rest of the day was them making fun of me and calling me a dumbass for counter steering. Later in the day we were dispatched to setup a landing zone for a medical helicopter for a motorcycle crash. The whole damn way to the LZ they were both going... You want to know how this guy crashed??? Probably tried steering the wrong way... hopefully this guy didn't listen to you and turn the wrong way... etc etc 🤨. Turned out the helicopter was cancelled and the rider wasn't too bad off.

Once I figured out they'll argue about anything just to pass the time, it became funny.

Amazing how many humans have a complete lack of knowledge when it comes to basic physics. This is the entire reason I started riding, I was deathly afraid of motorcycles, then I started researching, and I started learning more and more about the physics behind everything that happens. What bothers me about this story is these sound like "medical professionals"?... a lot of biology is physics and chemistry... so yeah frightening beyond belief that adults in the medical profession don't understand how/why counter steering works the way it does. I knew about counter-steering before I ever started researching, the more I learned the more comfortable I became with the idea.

I had ONE slide when I was on my GSXR-750 some 8 or 10 years ago. It was a decreasing radius turn and I leaned passed my own personal lean barrier... physics didn't cause the slide, the bike didn't cause the slide, I CAUSED the slide because I became unsettled, and stood the bike up and slid off into gravel. Complete human error.

FYI... I'm pretty sure they'd become VERY unsettled if they knew exactly how that helicopter remained in the air (physics again)... they'd probably sh*t themselves. Modern Marvels and How Things Work are two of my favorite shows.

 

[MattyBoy]

During interviews for potential hires (in software engineering), I would always ask "How do airplanes fly?" Amazing the kind of BS answers I got! Very few had the balls to admit "I don't know" (and they always got bonus points for that). Hardly anyone knew the airfoil principal, i.e., Bernoulli's principal of air pressure differentials. When I was in college (for EE), we all had to take electives such as Control Systems, Mechanical Engineering, Thermodynamics, Fluid's and Dynamics, etc. Apparently, not anymore! Sad. I figured if someone does not have a breadth of knowledge that would include something as simple as airfoils (even and intuitive understanding), then they would never be a good engineer. My peers always made fun of me asking this question... but it revealed a lot!

 

[Jarhead0311]

So my question is... since I'm coming off a sports bike, are there clutch and break sets that allow for more of a lean angle? (Already got an aftermarket exhaust that won't scrape)

Not sure but I would assume so I run the stock setup.

 

[Engine_Joe]

I’m no expert.
But this is what works for me.

1. Watch “A twist of the Wrist.” (Go for the shorter version without all the teen drama)
2. Ride
See # 1. Wash rinse and repeat over and over. Each time I watch it it makes more and more sense after riding. I watch it again before riding season.

3. Mentally discipline yourself that you will increase lean angle incrementally and stay within your comfort zone as you get used to the bike. People here always say “Trust your tires.” That was the hardest thing for me to do in the beginning. Now, as long as I’m on a clean, dry road I’m confident the tires will hold well past the peg scrape.
4. Go to a big, empty parking lot and ride in diminishing radius (spiral) as you approach your limits for confidence. Repeat in the opposite direction. You can “learn lean a lot in a parking lot. “One trick that helps me in a diminishing radius turn is to lock my elbow on the inside handle bar and progressively lean my body weight on to that side to reduce turn radius. I think of it as almost trying to “grind the handlebar tip into the turn”, but, of course I never get much lower than a peg scrape. (Now I can predict when the peg will scrape with in a split second before it happens. I still hate that sound.). Keeping my elbow locked gives me more controlled leverage than when it is flexed. However, if I’m “kissing the mirror “ I have to flex the elbow to crouch down in position. Depending on my speed I will counter weight to the opposite side to lean the bike more for slow turns or lean in and “kiss the mirror “ for faster turns.

Then, as I twist the throttle on the way out of the turn I approach Nirvana.

YMMV.
Ride safely, my friends.

 

[bigbadvoodoodady_1]

Why push it? If you "hot rod", eventually you'll fail. Just enjoy life with all your limbs intact... but that's just me.

Same here...I had a crotch rocket years ago, enjoyed that life; don't miss the back pain. Can't wait to get on my scout bobber and turn it into a smaller cruiser that I can take some longer trips on.

I only went to a few track days on my GSXR-750, I enjoyed it but...I dunno, it was just a lot of work to get geared up, get the bike ready, run over to the track etc. Did the same with the SCCA and Rally Crossing, there are times where I miss my rally-x days and doing 100+ on desert roads, but it's really a lot of work. Same with just 'owning' a sports bike, my old owners manual said to clean and re-lube the chain every 300miles... HOLY F*CK I'd put those miles on my bike in one weekend, sometimes in one day. Plus every 1,500 (or was it 3,000) having to adjust valves... ugh! This is is the whole reason I got rid of that bike, exhausted by the maintenance schedule. With a Scout w/belt drive, and no valve timing etc... I just get on the bike and ride!