[Tfug] [OT] WTB: motorcycle

[Jim]

I second this in its entirety - Great points and great suggestion on the
bike.

 

Jim

 

 

  _____  

From: tfug-bounces at tfug.org [mailto:tfug-bounces at tfug.org] On Behalf Of Jim
March
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 10:07 AM
To: Tucson Free Unix Group
Subject: Re: [Tfug] [OT] WTB: motorcycle

 

Ohhh boy.

If you "suppose you're getting a sportbike", and you don't know much about
them, alarm bells go off.  Of the "oh God he's gonna die" type.

OK.  Pay attention here, because this part's important.

The insurance rates on bikes vary a lot by type.   The "type" with THE MOST
expensive insurance, esp. for younger pilots, is for the higher-end 600cc
sportbikes.

It can run as high as $2k a year for full coverage - for somebody with a
clean record but new to bikes.

This is the insurance company's way of saying "oh shit, he's toast".

What's going on is, a high-end 600cc four cylinder bike will make 100hp or
more.  It will redline somewhere around 13,000rpm or more.  MOST of the
power will be up past 9,000 or more.

In other words, hammer it and the initial feel will be fairly mellow.  Down
around 3,000-4,000rpm it'll be a pussycat - as little as 35hp.  As the revs
climb, horsepower will NOT rise smoothly.  It'll come on in peaks.  Hitting
one of those peaks in mid-corner means death.  I'm serious: when HP jumps
from 70 to 90 in the space of as little as 200rpm as some of these crazy
things do, the rear wheel is going to break traction.  Somebody really good
will feel it coming and hover it on the edge, or recover from a minor break.

A newbie will "high side".

A high-side is where the rear end steps out maybe a foot, hooks up traction
again and flings you up to 60 feet worth of hangtime.  Face first.  Watch
that landing, it's a doozy.

Ghaaa.

The solution if you want to learn to ride fast is to get something with TWO
cylinders first.  Or even one.  The fewer the cylinders, the less "peaky"
the powerband.  It also means less peak horsepower for the displacement
but...that's OK if means surviving the learning curve.

I should finally have my bike fixed and registered within the next month.
My ride is the same size and power as a 600cc sportbike.  And I can hang
right with 'em - I've got 20 years piloting under my belt including a couple
years streetracing in the Santa Cruz mountains (California) damn near every
weekend.  Never wiped out.  My ride now: a Buell S3 Thunderbolt with mods.
This is a two-cylinder, 1,250cc low-RPM "grunt motor" (heavily modified
Harley Sportster engine) with a broad, controllable powerband rather than a
high-RPM "screamer-motor".  You could survive the learning curve on THAT
better than you could a Jap 600.

Come to the meet tonight, we'll talk more, OK?  To really advise you I'd
need to know your height, weight and experience level.

Look...I had a good friend die on a bike I sold him.  That still tears me
up.  He was a total wildman, it was his fault, but...still hurts.

I am NOT saying "don't ride".  There are bikes out there that can teach a
newbie to ride to the edge, that are fun as hell, handle great but don't
have the bad habits the top rides have.  The Suzuki SV650 is a great choice
for most rider sizes:

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/mcy/694719071.html

Jim March

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