Going Fast…
Jul 20th, 2009 by Leo
Going fast in a car is about pinning the gas pedal to the floor and being pushed into your seat…tires squealing with the smell of burnt rubber and asphalt in the air. But going fast on a bike is not (all due respects to the drag racing crowd – that’s its own separate thing). And the moment you get that, you start to ride differently…Better. Faster. Stronger. Okay maybe not stronger, but you get the picture.
Speed, on a motorcycle, is all about corner speed. “Yeah, getting on the throttle hard after a turn right?” Well, not exactly. It’s about going fast in the turn while mostly off the gas (throttle just cracked on slightly). At a 45 degree lean angle, going an easy 40 miles and hour, the suspension on a sportbike compresses significantly. I’m not an expert on the physics of it, but it’s something like 1.4G’s. You and the bike weight 40% more during that turn. And you can feel it! A 400lbs bike weighs an extra 160 lbs. A 160 lbs rider weighs an extra 64 lbs! You can really feel the suspension compress, and you can feel the weight on your outside leg as you push off leaning head first into the turn. THAT is the feeling of going fast. Any idiot can whack the throttle open once the bike is vertical, but only supermen (and superwomen who know how to corner) can fly.
So stop riding your bike like a car and learn to corner that thing! Want to learn? Get over to a riding school. Lee Parks, California Superbike, some of the track day organizations have decent training also. If you do the Code School, rent one of their bikes. Even if you ride to the school. That way you take out the variable of suspension setup (because they know what they’re doing). Also, the no frills ZX-6 track bikes will help break you out of thinking that you need a fancy bike to go fast… Any modern middle-weight sportbike is amazingly well engineered, so you don’t need a particular brand other than for show.
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If anyone is curious, here it is a table with the lean angle and the acceleration that the suspension must handle:
0 1.000 g
5 1.004 g
10 1.015 g
15 1.035 g
20 1.064 g
25 1.103 g
30 1.155 g
35 1.221 g
40 1.305 g
45 1.414 g
50 1.556 g
55 1.743 g
60 2.000 g
65 2.366 g
70 2.924 g
75 3.864 g
80 5.759 g
85 11.474 g
PS: I love this blog!
Cheers,
Breno
I think MotoGP tires have a max lean angle of 60 degrees – so they’re pulling 2Gs..amazing. I think street tires max out at around 50 degrees in the dry.
Thanks Breno, I was looking for something like this. Cheers!