[ZukiFred]

You are alredy out riding you abilities and don't seem to realize it in my opinion.

[BobKat2002]

I just read the title of your Thread again.

"...Time for Some Honesty."


Honesty, is an evaluation of Perspective.

Guess where perspective comes from?

Experience. (Theres that word again.)

Ride Safely Jason.

[lance]

here is my point..... i could outride myself in the twisties on a SS bike.

different bike + same mistakes = same outcome, probally even worse on a SS that is no where near as nuetral and forgiving as the katana, you should think about easying up on the squid act and really learning how to ride....

[guy2600]

good comments people... lemme bring up a point. I dont care how good of a driver you are, you arent gonna take a stock ford explorer and beat a stock corvette in the turns.

If the drivers are comparable yes. It still doesn't change the fact that road racing is 90% technique on a motorcycle though. Bike will make a difference but not nearly as much as skill, go to the track and see for yourself (when the pros ride with the newbies).

i dont blame my crashes on the bike.... i blame it on myself for believing everyone on here that says the katana handles well and me pushin it hard until i eat it.

It's all in the skill dude. I'm telling you, take some classes it will make the biggest difference, then trade the bike in. Don't try to race your friends on sportbikes, couple the bikes drawbacks with being a new rider and it's going to get ugly. As the Jedi say 'you must learn to use the force"... [/url]

[tdrcomm]

I suppose I can speak from both ends of the spectrum.

Both were and are daily rides. And as daily transportation both are equally fantastic as long as you ride "within it's abilities and YOUR ability". I've seen folks on Ninja500's make me look like I'm at my first day of MSF, and I've rode with a pack of Busas that couldn't make a turn unless it had a stoplight on the corner. I think you have to decide how you want to ride, get the experience to ride that way, THEN find the bike that fits.

I have always said what has been mentioned before: The Kat doesn't do anything great, it just does everything well. The "Swiss Army Knife" of bikes. It's the experience of the rider that gets the most out of any bike.

And stop draggin' a knee in the neighborhood... I got kids crossing the street!

[brooder]

Let's compare just base specs from suzuki.com

Katana 600:
Dry Weight: 208kg (458 lbs.) 210kg (462 lbs.) CA. model

GSXR 600:
Dry Weight: 161kg (354 lbs)

Now I don't know the horsepower right off hand (didn't search), but I know the Gixxer has more than the Kat. So no kidding the Kat isn't going to keep up.

I love my Kat. I have no intention of getting rid of it (except, maybe, to get a 750). I might buy a Gixxer for a track bike, but for street riding and the weekend warrior in me, it'll be my Kat. I don't ride it harder than I know I can (100mph on a straight away I'm fine, corners I still take slow because I'm still nervous). For a daily rider, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I won't comment on why you might have problems with the Kat, Jason. Everyone else is going a good enough job. Just look deep at why you want a bike before deciding to get rid of the Kat.

[Anonymous]

Simply put...."You've never tried to follow BearKat, have you..."

[jason05]

ive learned something else..... there are two kinda people...

people that LOVE katanas.... and everybody else.

there is a reason for this.

[Omegaman]

Alrighty, so the Kat isn't going to win the 600cc supersport this year.

Let me bring this back into perspective.

Name me a bike that is better at riding from New England or Florida, to Deals gap, having fun with the "SS guys", trekking home, then getting up on Monday and riding to work after dropping your 13 year old daughter at school.

The R6 is gonna get tossed around on the freeway because it is too light, the Concours is gonna start suffering in the third corner of the dragon and both of them are going to keep you late at work on Monday to make the bike payment and extra $ for insurance.

There is no better compromise for the money.

It does it all quite well. The bike of the "renaissance man" thank you very much.

Most people on this forum do not specialize in JUST touring or JUST canyon riding, they mix it up a lot.

Ride what you like, but you will not find a better bike at fitting in with virtually all riders.

Carl-

[KatDan]

how many miles do you have under your belt? how many crashes have you had? as forgiving as the Kat is, you need more experience. you have only managed to find YOUR limits, not the bike's. sign up for MSF, or i think there is an advanced MSF course as well if you did the basic one already. do a track day with instructors to tell you what you do right and wrong. also, if you still have Macadam tires on your bike-GET THEM OFF!!!!! nothing will make that bike feel better than new rubber. Pilot Powers, Sportec M1-anything but crapadams. good luck!

[jason05]

how many miles do you have under your belt? how many crashes have you had? as forgiving as the Kat is, you need more experience. you have only managed to find YOUR limits, not the bike's. sign up for MSF, or i think there is an advanced MSF course as well if you did the basic one already. do a track day with instructors to tell you what you do right and wrong. also, if you still have Macadam tires on your bike-GET THEM OFF!!!!! nothing will make that bike feel better than new rubber. Pilot Powers, Sportec M1-anything but crapadams. good luck!

10,000+ miles in 6 months. i put less than 8 miles a day on my bike for work... the rest is nasty hard riding. ive taken the advanced msf course. i spilled it 3 times due to my own fault. 1 time going waaay too fast. 1 time was due to going too fast i guess, though i was doing two thirds the speed of my friend on his SS, and the final time was because i freaked and grabbed the brakes ( cause i thought a car was pulling out) in a turn. definitely have to admit that i screwed up good there. im running Pirelli Diablos, love em.

[OldandReallySlow]

Like DeeDub said, folow BearKat (though I don't think you'll be able to). That aside, here is a little motorcycling (32 years) and MSF (12 years) opinion. If you are dragging toes and you're not BearKat or SVBrat, then your riding style is weak. If you are dragging peg feelers then you need to take them off and your style is still weak. If you wreck because you are going hella fast then you are riding over your head, not the bikes. Jason, this is just experiance talking however, you probably will never ride the Katana to 100% of it's ability. However you will ride to and beyond yours long before to bikes are met. I've rode Kawasaki Mach III's, Honda CBX's Katanas, GSX-R750s and now GSX-R 1000s. I do track days, I do schools, I do follow BearKat (and he follows me) so I hope you take this as honest opinion and experience.

[The CyberPoet]

OK, Jason, here's my take:

What everybody else said...
(Outriding your skill-level, pushing too hard too fast, expecting more than you could cope with, kat being a better all-arounder than a specific-anything bike), PLUS:
What others didn't mention in detail:
(A) You were on mismatched tires with mismatched wear levels at less than ideal pressures.
(B) You were setting your standards to those who have different hardware and different experience levels, which let you get caught out.

I think these two issue contributed to the 1-per-month average of accidents you had in the first five months of riding. That's enough of an average that I would tell any close friend that this endeavor wasn't for him/her and to hang it up for now. A lot of us cringe every time you post, praying and hoping it isn't something like "I'm laying in a hospital bed, typing one-handed, and my legs are gone from the knees down. But at least the Demerol drip is keeping me from feeling it..."

The Katana is a UJM (abbreviation for the concept of an Universal Japanese Motorcycle) more than a sports-tourer, meaning it does everything reasonably well, but nothing superbly. The UJM label passed in history some time ago and these days they want to slap one of a dozen labels on any bike to try to fit it into a nice little niche... Is it a tourer? Yup. I tour on it and have done so extensively. It's a major reason I own it rather than another bike. Is it a sport-tourer? Only because it's based on a sports bike of by-gone times, and thus still has some sporting under-pinnings (but that's nothing in comparison to current-crop race-replica bikes).
Being an UJM, by upgrading in specific ways, you can emphasize and improve specific aspects of the bike (in my case, the first thing I changed was the touring & basic handling aspects -- saddle, hard luggage, good tires; I've worked through the brakes and the information systems -- now I'm at the suspension improvements). Yet, even in stock form, I have no doubt that I could hang with any of the GSXR/R6/R1 crowd in this area anywhere where the pure power-to-weight ratio doesn't make the primary difference, and have done so in the past (including a lot of comments by other riders for taking sweeping turns like the overpass from East Bay onto Ulmerton eastbound at speeds they simply couldn't match). But the ability to do that comes from experience and practice -- I can do it as readily on any bike that has a reasonable modicum of grip and some ground clearance (and I'm generally not hanging off, knee down, either; I generally look like an Euro-cop, sitting almost perfectly upright to the bike when I do it, to keep the bike settled under me as I push it towards it's limits).
In this day and age, GP riders tend to power out of corners, shooting the rear around, but up until the reintroduction of 1000cc 4-strokes into the GP arena, those who went the fastest did it by being the smoothest. Even now, Rossi's Yamaha is down 10% on power compared to the Honda V-5's, and he is still kicking their butt because most of the time he is simply smoother...

I think more than anything else (more than even a new frame), you need professional tutoring: track days, advanced riding courses, etc. I think you might have even been happier with a Ninja 500, given that it's more nimble (I scare myself on the gf's because of how nimble it is -- and it'll do 130; what's the 5 or 10 mph difference really worth?).

But that's just my opinion. Are there better bikes? Sure there are. There are better bikes for just about any undertaking... I'd even hazard to say that for most of our crew, the R1200GS would be better for their real-world undertakings (but not at anything approaching the price of the Kat). So far, my Kats have taken me across the country, both on-road and off-road (and seriously off-road at times), eaten up twisties and highway miles with equal aplomb, gone camping, shot up roosters of beach sand at dawn, carried me through traffic jams and a ton of commuter traffic, climbed countless hills and ripped through numerous valleys, and never broken down once... Come to think of it -- maybe that's part of the practical differences: the Kat is, in large part to me, where it has taken me and what it has shown me, rather than just the raw numbers of what it can or can't do compared to bike X...

I guess I'm rambling.

Cheers
=-= The CyberPoet

[gpggnnn]

There is a guy who worked with me. He had just bought a 05 gixxer-1000. Ragging on my katana 600 (05). My brother bet him 600 hundred dollars he could beat him on my bike. my brother has been racing for about 25 years. Long story short my brother beat him becaus of his inexperience

[BraadaJim]

The Katana is what it is and it has been that for close to 20 years. From almost your first post here I said you bought the wrong bike and here we are again. Your trying to ride it like it's something it's not and because of that you are disappointed and blaming the bike. Truth is the bike does exactly what it was designed to do and does it well, and with a few of the right additions, very well.
You can say the Kat won't corner but there is proof all around to the contrary.....


Ultimately though nothing anyone here has to say is going to change your mind or opinion because in the end the Katana was never the type of bike you were really looking for.