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You'll be fine for C group. Once you get up to pace I'd start looking for something with a bit more kick, the problem with 250s is that you carry a lot of cornerspeed and not a lot of straight speed. I could motor past 250s on my SV, and it was a little scary sometimes when you've got a guy on a 250 doing 100, me on an SV doing 125, and a guy on a literbike doing 160+, all going for turn 1. Plus a 250 can be frustrating because track rules can be restrictive and stop you from really being able to pass people who are parking it in the corners and gassing it on the straights. I'd say the best baseline trackbike you can get is either an SV650 or an older 600, depending on what's available in your area. You're best off buying something that's already track prepped, because there's a fair bit of money that goes into track prep, and you inevitably lose it on the sale unless you part the bike. Right now there's a lot of nice track bikes out there for really cheap due to the economy.
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Mar 24, 2010 18:40
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Oakey posted:Ok, needknees posting about me going to a trackday in the goon rides thread pushed me to actually post this. I've been thinking about doing track days this year, but I have a couple of things that hopefully someone can help me out with. Generally, the rule of thumb is: Which bike can you afford to see cartwheel? The Kat will be fine on the track for a first trackday, if that's what you're concerned about. You're gonna have a better time getting replacement fairings on ebay for the kat than you will the RSV. Resource posted:That's good to hear. About how much is a track prepped bike going to run? If I can't find a track prepped bike, how much would it be to get one set up? (assuming the basics needed for a beginner) Well, you can run essentially anything at the track...the biggest thing for most trackday providers is that you need to dump out all your coolant and replace it with distilled water. Most don't require safety wiring anymore, and you will probably need to tape over your lights, although it depends on the trackday provider, and if your housings are glass or not. If they aren't, you can usually get away with just pulling the headlight/taillight fuses. As to what else it needs? Well, newish tires are good. The reason I recommend a trackbike is because if you crash it, you just sort of shrug and shove it into your garage, patch it back together at your leisure, and go back out. You crash your nice streetbike and it becomes ugly garage art until you replace lights and stuff. Race fairings are nice because they take a fair bit of abuse, they're relatively cheap, and they're glassed over so you can run without headlights/taillights/turn signals/mirrors. For the cost of race plastics, track oriented tires, rearsets, and suspension work on a 250 (~1500-2k), I've seen "trackday newb starter deals" with a 8-12 year old 600, and bunch of random spares. Plus you don't have to do the tire shuffle to get sticky stuff for the track and harder stuff for the street. But for now, I'd recommend dumping the coolant and replacing it with water, taping your lights up, making sure your tires are in good shape, and going out to tear it up for a day or 2. You'll know once those days are over if you want a track bike or not 
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Mar 24, 2010 20:15
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FuzzyWuzzyBear posted:I've always wondered why an SV made such a good trackbike. It seems like the torquey twin-cylinder engine would make a great streetbike, but would be lackluster compared to more peaky I4 sportbikes on the track. Cheap, moddable, huge aftermarket, enough power to keep up with the 6s but not so much that you can rely on the gas to get around people. Plus they're stupid reliable, and with relatively cheap mods you can get them pretty light (~350 pounds), and they're easy on tires. Out here, you can find race winners for 3-4k, with reliable engine builds, full suspension upgrades, making 80ish HP, and weighing less than 350 pounds. You can find podium capable proddy bikes for ~2k. Lower power is also forces you to focus on getting on the gas early and hard, and using the brakes less, because if you want to go fast, you have to. You don't get to pass in the straights, either, so you learn to pass in the corners. It's also simply a lot less intimidating, so you can get comfortable with the throttle faster, you've got multiple choices for gears through a corner. No need to be afraid of the throttle when it doesn't want to slide on every corner exit. They are fantastic tools to learn to ride fast with, and most people can't ride anywhere near the potential of an SV, let alone a 600. However: You can learn to ride fast on anything. I'm biased to the SVs, as I had a very nice one, it was cheap, and I had a lot of fun on it. But in all honesty, the bike is less important than how you choose to apply yourself. Zool's right in that the real competitor for the 600s is the 848, but I didn't find a 600 I couldn't ride around until I got to the A group. That's where things changed and I really started to see the difference between people of similar skill levels on different bikes. Until I started racing, the only mods to my bike were lighter parts (subframe, fairing stay) and a gsx-r front end/penske shock. The straights are too short on a track to really reward power unless you're racing or you're talking about a 50hp+ difference. Oakey posted:Whoa, I had no idea. Looks like there are a couple of Ebay stores from China and Hong Kong that sell complete fairing sets for it. Are those pretty equivalent to the stuff from Suzuki? Or would I be better off buying those first and putting them on for the track? They're not OEM quality. They'll be a bit of a bitch to fit, and they use really low quality plastic that essentially explodes on impact with the ground. The paint quality is pretty good though. I'd try and find a used set of race plastics. Or honestly, I'd leave it stock for your first couple of trackdays, and then find a trackbike...it's really easy to go mod crazy and end up spending a lot of money when you should have just bought a pre-prepped bike, unless you're an obsessive hunter like me who spends hours looking for deals. Frame sliders are a sort of mixed bag at track speeds, sometimes they can save you a lot of damage, sometimes they're gonna help the bike flip itself into oblivion/destroy frame and motor mounts. In general, I've seen them save more bikes than I have seen them total, but that's just my experience. Z3n fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Mar 24, 2010 |
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Mar 24, 2010 20:52
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schreibs posted:I was thinking of running my SV S without race plastics for my first day. It's got frame sliders on it but I was wondering if I crash are these sliders going to do anything other than dig into the ground if I go off? As I said, it's a mixed bag. If you have them on there, I'd just keep running them, the SV doesn't have as many bad potential mounting spots like some bikes, where people will attach them to fairing mounts that are just going to strip or tear out/break off. Totally pointless. With an SV you pretty much have to attach the frame sliders to a beefy engine bolt. Race plastics are nice because the keep your expensive stock plastics nice and clean, they're typically more resistant to sliding (if you get quality ones) they can be easily and cheaply repaired with fiberglass, they're glassed over so you don't have headlight/taillight holes, and generally, they're way cheaper than OEM stuff. Fit and finish isn't as high, but durability and light weight make up for it. Plus usually you only have 4-6 quick turn fasteners holding them on, so they come on and off really fast for work on the bike.
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Mar 24, 2010 21:24
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AncientTV posted:Anyone have experience with airtech fairings? Their site has pretty much every bike model in existence, and the prices aren't too bad from what I can tell. Airtech is quality stuff. I don't know how they stack up in crash protection, but from what I've seen their fit and finish is good.
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Mar 24, 2010 22:08
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Still a good performance. I've been reading the race reports on BARF and quietly missing the hell out of racing. Also, holy poo poo at there being 36 loving starters in Novice Middleweight. We had 12 last year, I think.
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Mar 26, 2010 02:08
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T-Square, why can't you run it in lightweight supersport? Also, I've linked this before but goddamnit, here it is again, this is how you pack 2 bikes:  Click here for the full 800x600 image.  Click here for the full 800x600 image.
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Apr 8, 2010 17:18
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Tire pressure gauge and a bicycle pump that will work on your rims. And painkillers, trackdays can workout strange muscles and some ibuprofen at the end of the day can be a life saver.
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Apr 8, 2010 17:24
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2ndclasscitizen posted:or up the inside on the gas on exit. Best place to pass ever. Sometimes it can help to brake a little harder, a little earlier, let them gap you slightly on corner entrance, and then carry more cornerspeed and get on the gas earlier to get by them with authority and keep good safety margins. Giving them a bit of a gap gives you a couple of things...a little additional time to drift wide on exit so you have more space to go up the inside, and enough space on corner entrance to carry more speed through without worrying about rear end packing them. Plus it helps you open up your vision so you're not all fixated on the guy in front of you. Z3n fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Apr 8, 2010 |
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Apr 8, 2010 17:58
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FuzzyWuzzyBear posted:Your turn-in seems pretty vague for a few corners, and although you hit the apex most of the time, you're not always tracking out all the way to the outside afterwards. He's simply not going fast enough to use all the track. This is the number one thing that new riders to the track do that they absolutely do not need to do...they spend a lot of time drifting out wide only to have to swoop all the way back across the track to get to their next turn in point. You should only use as much track on exit as you absolutely need to use, the excess is both safety buffer and a good indicator of how much more speed you can carry through. This leads to them being unpredictable as they run really wide on every exit, unpredictable swooping across the track to make their next turn in, and they've got a greater chance of running off if they blow a corner because they're always running to the outside when they just don't need to. If you watch any professional racing, you'll see that on many corners, they won't approach using the whole track...it's pointless to cover ground that you don't need to cover, you're just making the track longer for yourself. quote:I'd suggest doing the "two-step" which is where before a corner, you select the turn-in point, then find the apex, and as you're staring at the apex, notice in your peripherals when you hit the turn-in and aggressively steer the bike in. It should result in a nice and crisp turn-in and a good straight line through the corner. This is good though. Vision and looking through the corner properly is essential. Besides that, you really need to get off the literbike and on to a bike that'll actually let you use the revs correctly. You're staying off the gas, not getting pinned, out of the power band, braking early because the bike's too quick, and are just in general not being consistent as you travel around the track. You're in control and smooth, which is good, but you're not able to take advantage of what the bike has to offer yet. Moving down to a smaller bike will make you faster and more comfortable on the bike, and let you get closer to the limits without feeling like your head is going to explode. Z3n fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Apr 12, 2010 |
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Apr 12, 2010 18:10
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Don't overthink it, haha. Don't remove the windscreen. Shouldn't need to remove the centerstand, if you're dragging it, get on the gas a little earlier to jack up the bike and keep it off the ground. If you have to slide on something, would you rather slide on the bag supports or the bags?
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Apr 12, 2010 18:31
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Tsaven Nava posted:The bags reduce cornering clearance by quite a lot, in addition to being extra weight and two giant square sails sticking out into the wind. I sort of assumed they range officials wouldn't let me on the track with them on, to be honest. Eh you don't need to worry about the additional weight or the fact that they're sails, but reducing cornering clearance is bad, so pull them off. Remember you're on a 'strom, not a sportbike, and it's not a race. You're just out to have some fun, not worry about 10ths.
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Apr 12, 2010 18:43
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The problem is leather gets heavy when it's wet. Top level racers have clear rainsuits they use...can't give up that sponsership air time!
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Apr 15, 2010 21:43
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I can tell you right now: Riding in the rain is pretty much the best thing you can do to improve as a rider. You have to focus on being super smooth, but you'll be able to get much closer to the limit at much lower levels of speed. It's an excellent learning tool. On a track it's great because there's a lot more consistent traction and conditions, so you can really start to develop a feel for limited traction situations. It's perhaps not as cool to go ripping out of the corners, but as a rider you will feel hugely accomplished as long as you managed to keep it upright 
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Apr 16, 2010 05:26
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What the gently caress is with the dead batteries lately? Also congrats.
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Apr 19, 2010 16:27
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aventari posted:I just picked up an extra set of F4i wheels with front rotors and a rear sprocket (no rear rotor) for $100, score! I like Pirelli Diablo Supercorsas and the Dunlop 211NTecs. But all of them are drat good, can't really go wrong with any of them.
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Apr 22, 2010 00:24
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NitroSpazzz posted:Started prepping the DRZ for Monday's track day. Changed the oil, will replace the coolant with H2O and water wetter as well as bleed the brakes. Also planning on checking it over for loose hardware, chain maintenance then loading it up. Make sure you check your tire pressures at the track.
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Apr 22, 2010 02:56
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Spiffness posted:He only eats Tofurkey and sleeps hanging upside down. Also supermoto. Sucks to hear about people crashing, but that's why you take it slow at wet trackdays.
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Apr 24, 2010 21:48
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Your tires look fine. Did you check PSI from cold to hot? Get your g/f out on the track. Then she'll be the one dragging you to trackdays.
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Apr 26, 2010 22:19
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Tsaven Nava posted:No, I neglected to check the PSI hot. Cold was 29 front, 30 rear. In the C group, it doesn't really matter. When you get into groups where people are really starting to get up to speed, it's a bigger deal. Also you do a good job of committing to the corners but you really need to uh, apex at some point. You spend a lot of time way out in the middle of the track for no good reason.
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Apr 26, 2010 22:43
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French Canadian posted:Is anyone doing the track day with TI2TT on May 30 at Chuckwalla? I will be there. You can help me unload my massive bike! 4.5 hours from me  May as well go to infineon if I'm gonna travel that far.
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May 6, 2010 22:18
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1. That's the price of going faster. You don't need warmers though, for a variety of reasons. 2. As long as the shop is decent, it's not going to hurt the tires to swap them back and forth. 3. That's the price of riding a literbike. 4. Tires always have more to give, the problem is that when you push your personal limits and the limits of the tires at the same time, your chances of crashing go up dramatically. You want your tires to be there as your safety margin, and on top of that, DOTs spin up and go off in a much more controllable fashion than street/track tires.
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May 11, 2010 17:48
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Bird-o-matic posted:But heat cycles are bad... I've run a set of Pirelli Diablo Supercorsas for 5 days...plus the 2 race weekends and the 2 trackdays that the friend I bought the take off from did. No warmers. The only reason the tire lasted that long is because I was on an SV, and I heatcycled the hell out of it (A group pace). Right as it hit the wear bars, it started to go off, so it was toast anyways. SVs tend to wear tires gently, but they still get up to temp so you're looking at probably 70+ heat cycles on it before there was a measurable decrease in grip at A pace. I've done 6-7 days on a set of UK Dunlop 209 Ntecs without them going off. I think I replaced them because I was going out to race, I'd have to check my track notebook. I did get in the habit of parking my bike with the sun directly on the tires, and that does help confidence out the door, and probably has a minor reduction on heat cycling. An old racer I know was talking about heat cycles back in the day, where bias plies would go off after one heat cycle, and tire warmers being totally essential to keeping your tires sticking around more than a day. On modern tires? It's really not a big deal. I'd say a quarter to half of the racers in the pits don't use tire warmers. If you replace your tires after 3 trackdays, you don't need to use warmers. If you're trying to push out to the wear bars, and you're diligent about using your warmers (ie, using them when you should, and not turning them on when it's not needed), then it could see some gains. And to address the "But they're better on the warm up lap!", well...they're really not. The problem is that most tire warmers don't come with shrouds for the rims, so if there's a bit of wind, you're going to have a hot tire, but a cold rim. And as soon as you stop heating up the tire, you're going to have the rim leeching all the heat out. So you could go great through the first few corners only to discover that the rim has leeched the heat out of the tire and suddenly you don't have as much grip as you expected. Not to mention that your suspension has to come up to temperature as well, so even if you have tire warmers, you're still going to have cold, non-compliant suspension until you get a lap in. Which is why I've never bothered with warmers.
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May 12, 2010 17:07
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2ndclasscitizen posted:You're probably just as better off parking out in the sun in pit-lane, rather than the pits. You can actually feel the difference in parking it with the tires in the sun on a hot day, the shaded part of the tire will be noticeably cooler It keeps way more heat in than I expected. It's not like tire warmers, but there's also a lot of talk about the correct use of tire warmers (ie, when you turn them on, what you turn them on to, etc, and you can cook them by going overboard with the warmers). 
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May 13, 2010 01:08
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Zool posted:I had a sm race today that ended early with a pretty rough off. Half way through the first practice lap another rider lowsided as I was passing him on the outside. Suck, what's your recovery time like? Gonna be able to ride with me in July? Saga posted:What I took from needknees' last post was that he might well be better off picking up an old F2-F4 trackbike/racebike, or something of that kind (GSX-R 600 etc). It'll pay for itself in cheap rubber and dinged CBR1000 rims over a couple of years. Slightly slower bikes, to me anyway, are usually more fun. I have been barking up this tree for like 3 months now. He just doesn't listen. And yeah, I agree that slower bikes are more fun, within reason.
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May 17, 2010 17:06
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I'd recommend 2 things...first is that you rig up 2 mounts out of bent metal for the bottom rear of the belly pan. My bike had one bracket mounted on the inside of the exhaust bracket on the right rear of the bike, and the other mounted where the kickstand attaches. The other thing is that you should set up your fasteners/etc so that there's a small amount of tension on the fairings. It'll help stop them from rattling and keep them secure. Just so that you have to gently move things into place to get everything to line up. If they're allowed to rattle they'll beat themselves up and eventually pull through dzus fastners and stuff. Obviously, you don't want to have to stretch them all super hard or anything, just enough to keep some mild tension on the fairings. In order to attach the mids, I used U shaped brackets paired with hose clamps...the hose clamp went around the frame, one side of the U went into the hose clamp, and the other side was drilled for a dzus fastener. Helped me move things around to line them up with the pre-existing holes in the fairings. Also, if you're going to be riding aggressively, some of the GSX-R fairings are really wide at the bottom and you will drag the front of them at heavy lean angles, so make sure you've got a little flex in there just in case...the 916 fairings I ran were narrow and I never had that problem. Are you handy with fiberglass repair? I think I still have a few race tails kicking around if you want one... Z3n fucked around with this message at 22:14 on May 20, 2010 |
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May 20, 2010 22:09
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Getting a knee down is like losing your virginity. Good or bad, you'll never forget it.
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Jun 9, 2010 18:24
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frozenphil posted:I wish I had money to do trackdays right now. There's a 2 day track day at barber right now for loving $315. That price includes both days, lunch both days, refreshments all day long (water, soda, gatorade, light snacks), suspension setup help from Ohlins factory, and tire services from Bridgestone. I bet you could get at least 315$ for the non-running shitbox you've got floating around that's been sitting for the last 15 years. You'd also get a hell of a lot more mileage out of your bike in those 2 days on the track than you will out of the rotting carcass in the next 5 years. That's a drat good deal on a trackday at a nice track. Who the hell does Ohlins factory support out there?
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Jun 10, 2010 17:41
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frozenphil posted:No idea, it just says Ohlins factory support. Miller has the same setup. So does Infineon...although their wiring is old and poo poo, so good luck running multiple sets of tire warmers if you're sharing a garage with someone. Everything is so stupid cheap out there, garage prices are 2-3x that out here.
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Jun 10, 2010 18:37
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frozenphil posted:Email xacttech2000@yahoo.com and ask him. His company is putting on the track day. I'm not sure if you need to mention you're "from" alsportbike.com or not, don't think so but it couldn't hurt. From the stance of an A group rider, I don't care how slow or fast people are, as long as their lines are decent and they don't mind getting strafed. It's a trackday, not a race weekend (doesn't apply on friday practices before race weekends). I'd rather have a guy who's slower but consistent than a guy who's faster but all over the goddamn place. Although you should be running with ~15-20 seconds of the lap record in your bike's class as a general A group rule of thumb, but consistency, especially with high closing speeds, is far more important than overall pace.
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Jun 11, 2010 17:29
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Jack the Smack posted:I thought super moto racing is essentially a drift competition. Never change, JTS. 
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Jun 11, 2010 23:35
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FuzzyWuzzyBear posted:Okay, I've purchased a Fox racing shock for my F2. I know that if I raise the rear by, say, 8mm, I'll get quicker turn-in, but will this sacrifice stability? Yes, but generally older bikes are set up stable enough that increasing the ride height 8mm wouldn't cause stability issues. If the bike starts to headshake or feel like it wants to tuck the front on the throttle after the apex, you might want to lower it back down, but I highly doubt you'd see that much change out of 8mm of ride height on an older bike like that.
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Jun 14, 2010 14:54
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BlackMK4 posted:Any of you know someone with the new zx6r and weighing around 165-170lbs? I'm really curious how hosed up my suspension settings are. If it's loose and mushy midcorner, you need more compression, not less. I'd try adding rebound, not taking it out, as oftentimes the compression/rebound circuits overlap, especially on cheaper/less adjustable shocks. Too much rebound will cause the shock to pack in over bumps, but that's just part of the compromise of not having everything set up for your weight. As FlyinDoc says, step one is to get the sag right, then you need to dial in rebound. However, you can check compression by bouncing on it...in addition to the suspension not topping out and bouncing on rebound, you want the front and rear to be in balance. When you push down firmly on the middle of the bike or bounce it while rolling along, the front and the rear should both compress and extend at the same rate. Also, you need to have some way of watching the amount of front suspension that you're using...barring big events like pounding a pothole at speed, you should use 85-90% of the available suspension travel. And although modern forks are pretty good out of the box, it's 50/50 if they'll be set for your weight, and the stock fork oil tends to become water after about 3-5k miles, so your settings all go to poo poo anyways.
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Jun 19, 2010 17:29
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Revenant.Eagle posted:So, I pretty much needed new shorts once I pulled this SV for sale up: Holy poo poo.  Not the greatest mod list, I'd expect a built engine for 7.5k, but still, what a beautiful bike. Slamburger posted:To measure suspension travel, I use the trick of putting a zip-tie around the fork, snug to the top. Ride a few laps at full pace and then see how far down the tie has been pushed as a high-water mark of your maximum travel. As noted, you want it to be 90% of the way down. Totally forgot to include that!  Thanks for the catch.If you want to be super awesome cool, you get the suspension shop to put a rubber o-ring around the fork slider when they have the forks apart. Why? Because...it's...cooler. Z3n fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jun 22, 2010 |
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Jun 21, 2010 17:35
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after clicking that link.
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needknees posted:It was terrifying. Extremely terrifying. Nice save. Any idea what happened? Pothole/seam hit while you had the front end mostly unweighted? PS. You convinced you should buy a dedicated trackbike yet?
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Jun 29, 2010 21:50
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needknees posted:Thanks for the props on the save. ...although, I'd much rather not get the "nice save"'s because loving HELL that was not fun. Nice save may be worse than clicking off smooth boring laps, but it's still better than "poo poo, let me check the garage to see if I have part XYZ to help you out". That flicking it to your knee is what I talked about before, that's step 2...step 3 is flicking it to your toe.  If you'd bought a 600 they don't do that because they don't get the front end light enough to get unsettled like that part of the way down the front straight. Too tight on the bars definitely makes things worse too...I test rode a gsx-r1000 and had the same problem down the front straight at BW, there's a seam halfway down the front straight that'd start it slapping every time.
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Jun 30, 2010 02:21
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. I have been keeping an eye open. It's getting really annoying to change poo poo back and forth.
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Gnaghi posted:Sumo track day coming up on the 10th. I was going to rent a bike, but now it turns out the guy renting isn't going to be there. So I email the org that sets it up trying to figure out whether or not I need safety wire and numbers and two of the employees start arguing over it with each other while ccing me. Also need to get a back protector..not to mention a truck. That's because you're dealing with an org that hasn't arrived in the 21st century yet. Every trackday provider out here no longer requires safety wire, and many don't require coolant swaps in the novice class either. Back protector is a good idea on the track, and a truck is just needed period. But yeah, it's not as easy as autox.
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Jul 2, 2010 18:50
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You know if you bought a 600 you wouldn't go through tires that fast. (just sayin').
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Jul 8, 2010 09:30
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If you're not at or past the wear bars, you're fine.
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Aug 1, 2010 03:31
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First time at the track? The Q2s are fine.
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Sep 13, 2010 05:40
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