Hyabusa Anyone?

[shake777]

Quiet Hollow, sroback, and all, What an adventure the Busa has been. I'm scrambling like crazy to get up to speed in knowing how to handle my white rocket. I've been reading Twist of the Wrist II, watching the video, and reading Total Control. Those are the most helpful of the many others I've picked up at the library. Its fun when some of the skills just sort of appear in my riding repertoire. I'm learning how to correctly corner at low and high speeds, move on the seat, hang off the bike, and many other skills taught in these books. I've also taken a skills course after I dumped it at low speed. Too bad I didn't take it before.

Besides the work I'm putting into it, I'm having a great time and its hard to choose between my theater and the bike sometimes but usually time, weather, fatigue, all work to help me make the choice. I'm getting more and more confident and can really pin the throttle now but still with much respect.

I've only been up to 150 so far. Also my buddy bragged that his Rocket would toast me 0-60....not! I get a good bite in a drag race and I hooked in perfectly; Fortunately I had him with the timing in the start as well. I'm really proud of that one since he's got tons more seat time than I.

My wife has completely accepted the reality of me owning a bike and that's a huge monkey of my back.

So that's the skinny. I've been so busy riding and working on my theater that I've been absent from the forums. I don't like that as this has been one of my favorite pastimes.

For my theater, I'm going to build a room within a room to kill the noise. I can't wait for that. More reports to come.

Thanks for the invitation to keep the thread going QH and thanks for the great story of you on the Busa at 175+ sr. Shakabusa`

[HDBRbuilder]

My first bike was a new 1967 Yamaha Twin Jet 100 YL-1 (bought in October 1966). My current bike is a 1983 BMW 60th Anniversary R100RT with over 100,000 miles that I put on it so far. I have owned or ridden well over a hundred or so bikes over the years. My two-wheel experiences have been an endless odyssey of sorts for me!

In May
1974, I was in Belgium as an infantryman in B Co, 1st BN, 509th Airborne Battalion
Combat Team. We had just finished one
hellaciously miserable field problem and were at the Belgian Para-Commando parachute
training center in Schaffen to earn our Belgian jump wings. The general rule for us while there for was: as soon as we had made the requisite number of jumps for award of the
wings, we just had to make morning formations and had the rest of each day was ours to use as we wanted...so...I
had made friends with the owner and the DJ at the Joy Club Disco in Diest (a
popular nite-life spot within a decent walk from the jump school)...and it was
Sunday , and I was off the rest of the day and they had a spare bike, and
loaned me some civvies...so I rode the Suzuki GT 380 triple along to the Dutch
Gran Prix track in Holland (Circuit Park Zandvoort) with them and their ladies
to see the races there, and then to get out on the track and have some fun with
the bikes after the races were done for the day. It was a fun ride on a
two-stroke hotrod best used for stop-light drags! The pic is of me right after
we got to the track in Holland that day.

[Islander]

It's good to hear that you're working on improving your riding skills. A bike like that is tempting to ride hard, and its potential is so high that you'll need all those skills if you start to get daring with it.

You mentioned learning to hang off. This is part of racetrack riding, and enables higher cornering speeds, since it reduces the lean angle of the bike itself, so no part of the bike will contact the pavement, causing the tires to be lifted off the road surface, resulting in a crash.

However, I strongly recommend against hanging off while riding on the street. If you're cornering so fast on a modern sport bike that hardware will start to drag, so you need to hang off, you're likely at some point to exceed the available grip on most public road surfaces. Unlike racetracks, public roads have cars and trucks dripping engine oil, Diesel fuel, coolant, and who knows what else, as they travel along. As well, on the track you'd do lots of practice laps to gradually build up your speed and confidence.

You can try running the same corner over and over on the street, but it's not a closed circuit, and while you're down the road, turning around to come back, there could well be one of those drippy vehicles coming around "your" corner.

Sticking out a knee, or hanging off a bit, is no problem, but hanging off racer-style, with the centre seam of your pants lined up with the inner edge of your bike seat, is best reserved for track days. On the track, the surface is clean and regularly inspected, and if everything goes wrong, there's an ambulance standing by to take you to hospital. Lying in a ditch with a broken leg or worse, where nobody can see you, is not something you ever want to experience.

Hanging off to "look stylish", while not actually leaning over that far, looks pretty silly, but probably won't cause you to crash. Maybe do it if nobody is looking.

What I'm saying is that if you want to experience most of what your bike can do, you should go to a racetrack, and maybe even pay for a racing school session. It will improve your riding, and you'll legally be able to go around corners at speeds that would be unthinkable on the street.

Finally, it's easier to crash in low-speed corners than high-speed ones. That may sound counterintuitive, but at higher speeds, the bike's wheels have more centrifugal effect, and the bike reacts more slowly, so if it starts to drift, you have more time to react. At slow speeds, you can go from "in control" to "on your butt" in the blink of an eye.

Hope this is helpful. Ride safe!

[Islander]

HDBRbuilder, thanks for sharing your story of a great day. It must have been great fun to attend a Grand Prix race, and then get to ride on the track!

[][Y][H]

[HDBRbuilder]

HDBRbuilder, thanks for sharing your story of a great day. It must have been great fun to attend a Grand Prix race, and then get to ride on the track!

Yeah, it was fun...even though I was on a street drag bike, basically. When I got back to Vicenza, I got on a REAL machine, my 750 SS Imola was tuned up and waiting for me at the shop. Dell'Orto sliders were finicky![]

BTW, I have to agree with your advice about the hayabusa. First, it is a lousy pick for a knee-dragger. It is not designed for track racing, except maybe LARGE OVAL track racing, at best. Practicing track racing styles on the street is an accident waiting to happen! All it takes is one tiny drop of oil or spot of oil film at the right place at the wrong time and the bike is down and you are skipping along the pavement until you either slide to a stop or something SOLID stops your body's momentum, NEITHER of which is cause for celebration (except to give thanks for still being alive, if you are!).

All bikes have specific frame geometries and balancing/handling capabilities, and if you want a track bike then get a 600-750 class RR set up for the track...and USE IT ON A TRACK! If you want a straight-line, high-speed missile, then take your missile to Bonneville, or a drag strip, but the street is no place to be going over 100+ mph on a bike!

Didya ever have a June Bug hit you in the chest when going at 100+ mph??? Or...one of those large juicy grasshoppers hit your faceshield, and completely cover it with goop? How about a bird in the chest? How about going fast around a highway curve and right there in front of your front wheel is a huge loggerhead turtle trying to cross the road, but it only puts you and your bike airborne? Or coming around a blind curve and a big yeller yard dog is laying in your lane licking his ....well...you get the picture!

Preaching over...have fun, BE SAFE! Most of all...REMEMBER....BRAIN CELLS DO NOT REPRODUCE!

[shake777]

Thanks Islander for taking the time and interest in my safety and coolness. I'm using the hang moderately and even in reverse on slow speed turns as recommended in Total Control and the course I took. You hang your butt slightly into the direction your turning and it helps to balance on slow speed turms. Total Control is a book on how to apply track skills reasonably to street riding. Mostly I appreciate that your tone is helpful and so is your attitude. I do find hanging off slightly, at times, is helpful and I don't care how it looks. I never drag my knee. Thanks for helping to keep me alive and in one piece. Shakabusa

[Audio Android]

Shake777 it's nice to hear your doing well with the Busa, and good to know your researching how to ride better. I was wondering how you were getting along with that beast...Cheers...

HDBRbuilder....That picture is classic....[H] I was wondering where you were do to the eclectic selection of cars around you..... Man you have great stories!!...Thanks for sharing..[Y].......The only tracks I've been on have been Sebring and Lime Rock.....And I was only walking on them, shrug..[:$].

[Islander]

Thanks slander for taking the time and interest in my safety and coolness. I'm using the hang moderately and even in reverse on slow speed turns as recommended in Total Control and the course I took. You hang your butt slightly into the direction your turning and it helps to balance on slow speed turms. Total Control is a book on how to apply track skills reasonably to street riding. Mostly I appreciate that your tone is helpful and so is your attitude. I do find hanging off slightly, at times, is helpful and I don't care how it looks. I never drag my knee. Thanks for helping to keep me alive and in one piece. Shakabusa

Err, it's Islander, not slander. I try not to say bad things about people.

You're right, holding the bike down (the opposite of hanging off) a bit is helpful when accelerating through a sharp low-speed turn. As you apply throttle while turning, the bike will want to straighten up and run wide, so "taking the bull by the horns" and using your hips to lower the bike will make it take the line you want it to, and keep it in the lane it should be in. At all times, the bike should be doing what you want, where you want. The moment it's taking you for a ride is very shortly before the moment something bad happens.

With a very powerful bike like yours, you have to be very judicious with the throttle, especially at low speeds. That way, you won't wind up on YouTube, like these guys.

Right at the dealer:

This guy gets a little further:

I've heard that sound of a bike sliding along the pavement many times. Sometimes it was the bike beside me, behind me, or in front of me. Sometimes it was my bike. It's always cheaper and less painful to learn from the mistakes of others.

[mark1101]

I won't ever forget being on an extension ladder that was leaning on the telephone lines (strand) and I fixing some cable TV equipment...........basically, I should have had a bucket truck to work out on the lines but back in 1980 we did it on ladders with orange cones around it and your truck parked in front of it to protect you.

A kid did a wheelie at high speed..........locked up his front brake and slid down the road and nearly took out my ladder with me 25 ft. in the air (and safety belt attached to main line strand). The bike hit my truck instead and the kid went to the hospital. The kid told me his front brake locked on him intermittently. Bad timing.

[Islander]

Even on the track, during a race, sometimes it's best not to ride at the limit. In this picture, I'm being chased around a near-hairpin turn at the Nelson circuit at Shannonville Motorsport Park, a track about two hours drive east of Toronto.

As you can see, neither of us is leaned over all the way, since we're travelling at only 40-50 mph in that tight turn, so there would be precious little time to recover from a slide. As well, there's not much time to be gained in a short and slow corner. The long high-speed turns are where significant gains can be made against the other competitors and where the full leaning and occasional drifting takes place.

The lean angles in this picture look kind of conservative nowadays, because the modern tires are so much better. Mid-'80s street tires (even Sport compound) only offered a certain amount of traction, so we worked with what we had.

[mark1101]

Those look like pretty extreme lean angles to me. Do you have a picture of an extreme lean angle. That guy behind you looks like he's almost on the ground.

[Islander]

Contrast that picture of mid-1980s mid-pack pro riders on production bikes with these clips of MotoGP World Champions on factory prototypes.

Casey Stoner 2011 slide dance:

drift stoner in estoril: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsgNbRwOekw&feature=related

This is cornering on the limit:

Keep in mind that top riders dare to hang it out so far because they can sometimes pull off saves that are hard to believe, so what looks like "out of control" feels like "at the edge of control" to them. Also, they get free bikes and leathers.

IMPOSSIBLE crash save.:

Ivan Silva Save of the Year - Estoril 2012 - MotoGP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPFy9rXCKoE

Colin Edwards - the elbow save: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ac4Ak8EfxA&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Here's a close finish between Rossi (9-time World Champion) and Lorenzo (now 4-time World Champion):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=LweyWs26Ots&NR=1


MotoGP racing is serious, but the Isle of Man TT is really hardcore, with extreme high speeds through towns and between stone walls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph0SjLC_lqk&feature=endscreen&NR=1

For safety, the racers at the TT start one at a time, so it's more like a race against the clock than the usual mass-start race. The course is nearly 38 miles long, so the six-lap race is 226 miles long, with over 180 turns to remember.

In Ireland, the biggest road race is the Northwest 200, which runs on a triangular course between three towns. On the long straights, sustained speeds over 200 mph are normal, and it's a mass-start race, so the riders are often travelling at those speeds in a pack on two-lane country roads.

[Islander]

For those bikes on those tires, maybe, but you'll notice that while our knees are near the pavement, the bikes could lean over a bit more.

The modern world-level riders don't just rub their knees. Sometimes their elbows touch the pavement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0BfuCORjrc&NR=1&feature=endscreen

This is an extreme lean angle:

And so is this. Notice he maintains that angle while the tires are skipping across the painted curbing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsgNbRwOekw&feature=related

And this:

I posted several examples in a post a few minutes ago, plus links to the Isle of Man TT and the Northwest 200, but there seem to have been too many links, so it's pending approval from Amy.

[Islander]

The top riders are very confident while riding. Here's a clip of Marco Melandri powersliding out of a high-speed turn with one hand while flashing a peace sign with the other:

[Islander]

MotoGP riders have fun sometimes. Here are some top Yamaha riders on their day at the office:

[HDBRbuilder]

Tire geometry for today's machines' wheels (and the wheels themselves!) is far superior to what was around in the old days. Today's track bike can actually lean over farther and still have a good contact patch without worries of "riding the rim". Either way, hanging-off lowers the center of gravity without requiring the bike to lean further over in order to track a curve.

Here is "King Kenny" in his last Daytona 200 in 1983 (which he ran thru the pack to win) on the notoriously tire-shredding OW69. When you have a 680cc machine capable of 190+mph sprints in 1983, but track tire technology really ISN'T to that point, yet...there are tire issues to address.

[HDBRbuilder]

And here you have an almost-senior citizen who has survived all the "squid kid" lunacies of a miss-spent youth (and I have the road rash scars to prove it!). Notice how the lean angles are far less severe on the curves of Deal's Gap when riding a 1983 sport-tourer almost twenty years later in 1998 while still basically using 1983 tire technology. You live, you learn!....you still have fun!

-Andy

[shake777]

Apologies Islander, Funny you should mention the throttle because one of the well respected books I'm reading refers to the extremely good relationship one must have with it as the title Twist of the Wrist infers. I went down for lack of that knowledge. I blipped it in gear downshifting in a low speed turn. The bike shot out from underneath me and I hit the asphalt hard but with no serious injuries. Fortunately, I love it enough that my profound fear compelled me to learn rather than to sell it. Almost immediately I removed the passenger seat and replaced it with a hump that keeps you on it during hard accelleration. It's been a real process learning how to pin the throttle. It wants to leave you behind. Any ZX14R owners out there? Thanks, Shakabusa

[shake777]

Many thanks to all who are so into these two avocations and who took the time to share their experience with us. Shakabusa

[shake777]

Thanks Audio Android, I've been meaning to update my status because I thought interested members like yourself might think I took the big bite. I'm a more frequent contributor than I have been lately but I've just been so busy. I'm learning to handle two big hobbies and life as well. Shake