[SKNL2]

Have a read.

[nitrostamped]

i watched some cheesy video about " getting your knee down" half bike girls half real video but he does say to keep your wait on the pegs evenly

[SKNL2]

i watched some cheesy video about " getting your knee down" half bike girls half real video but he does say to keep your wait on the pegs evenly

I don't feel it necessary to weigh both pegs equally. I can even stick my outside foot into the air having it off the peg completely without any affect on handling the bike with my knee down. I have noticed, though, that I have a lot of weight on the inside peg.

When transferring your weight to the inside of the bike, you definitely want to weight both pegs evenly so as to be smooth. Also, you don't want to use your arms to move yourself, as this will cause the bike to get wobbly and possibly unsettled when you enter the turn.

I keep my arse slightly in contact with the saddle as a "guide" when I slide to either side. Imagine your riding position without a bike under you. In fact, squat in the same position as you would be in if you were on your bike. Now, with your knees bent, move in the way you would if you were sliding your weight to either side of the bike. That is the exact same movement you would employ to move your weight while on the bike. You don't move yourself with your arms. You do it with your legs. Your arms should stay relaxed on the bars and bent. Your grip should be relaxed and your weight distributed so that you won't come off the bike and your arms don't transmit any pavement imperfections to the front end while leaned over.

It's been said so much better so many times.

[madentaiwn]

I read that article before but it made a lot more sense the second time around.. I had the chance to go out and try some of the techniques stated here. It is a bit tough at first but I am getting better at the turns.. I just need to remember at court93kat said.. push on the peg to move my ass.. that helped a lot..

Oh yea.. I am getting a new exhaust and some new tires.. Trying to set myself up for success in the next season

[KRAZYKAT]

i hear pro riders who like to stear their bike from the back (spinning out), weight the INSIDE peg while they're doing it. when they want the tire to grip, they put their weight to the outside peg.
i guess that weighing the inside peg may change the center of gravity of you and your bike, leaning it over a bit more, effecting it's handling and resulting in LESS of a contact patch, making it easier to spin in conjunction with the throttle.
i tried to take a corner using both styles. i found that when i weighted the inside peg, and throttled, my tires started to howl (too inexperienced to actualy try and spin em). but when i did the same thing, but weighted my outside peg, that did'nt happen (the howling).
i could defenitly feel the differences in both styles, and in which end was actualy trying to steer the bike.
i do believe that both styles could be used together in a corner. and that which style you are using at the time just depends on how you weight your pegs, and how aggresive you are with your wrist.

[The CyberPoet]

Pro riders have gone through phases in that sense...

In the 70's, the smoothest rider was the fastest, with hyper-fast riders (like Mike Hailwood) staying in the seat and keeping the the bike as settled as possible. For most starting and mid-skilled street riders, I still think this is the safest way to learn to be fast, as it is the least likely to upset the suspension. I know I'm a lot faster sitting in the seat than many riders are hanging off the bike simply because of the smooth factor, especially on high-speed arcing curves.

By the mid 80's, early 90's, tires & frames had improved and riders started hanging off to garner more corner speed and tighter apexing.

As the end of the 90's drew to a close, pro-level bikes got to the power-output levels, the degree of frame flex, and the tire technologies that spinning the rear to control steering became possible and feasible, and some of the top pro-riders started taking full advantage of it (mostly pro-level riders with earlier dirt-track/flat-track experience). The advantage here was to be able to pick tighter lines (or more open lines) and squirt out of corners earlier, but tire lifespans paid a price... And while these guys were usually very fast in the start and middle of the race, by the end they had slower lap times because their tires couldn't take the extra abuse through the rest of the race. The direct result of this was new tire formulations that help the tires last longer -- part of the reason the newest crop of street tires tend to last significantly longer even with the same or better traction than their immediate predecessors did.

In the last few years, traction control has become big, and you see another phase-shift, with rear tire steering starting to fade away again, and smoothness (now partially rider and partially electronic & mechanical control) coming into play. There are still those who do steer by rear spinning up in the big leagues, but in MotoGP at least, I suspect their days are limited at best, with more and more electronic/mechanical traction loss damping being the rule and next year's mandatory 800cc engine-displacement cap. I expect by 2010, every MotoGP team will have at least as many "programmers" on staff as they have actual hands-on mechanics.
Again, there is a trickle-down effect, with such things as true traction control (BMW among others), engine power-output management control (GSXR 750 '07), fly-by-wire (Yamaha R6 & R1) and slipper clutches (many, including all the major Japanese factories) available.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[trinc]

i've had this discussion many times. reading TOTWII is really confusing because keith said weight the outside peg - in later discussions when asked about it he said he didn't write it well. what he wanted to say was weight the outside peg as you push on the inside bar. this is part of the X training ( balance )

if your truely hanging off the bike there is NO way you can weight the outside peg. your outside leg is used to anchor yourself against the bike.
you will have a lot of weight on the inside peg if your not anchored properly ( leg & arm ).

tim

[Black_peter]

if your truely hanging off the bike there is NO way you can weight the outside peg. your outside leg is used to anchor yourself against the bike.
you will have a lot of weight on the inside peg if your not anchored properly ( leg & arm ).

tim

That is a good description Tim..
True that in the turn you will have trouble wighting the outside peg
but you can to initiate the body movement. I think it moves to the impossible only after severe hang off.. Not safe for road type hang off

[trinc]

a lot of what we do seems complicated to explain - but very easy in practice.

i started to hang off going straight ! i wanted to be able to lift myself and get my butt off the seat without changing the direction of the bike - equal weight on the pegs & NO input to the bars.

i still do it more or less - i get my butt off the bike BEFORE the corner then i synch my turn in with dipping my shoulder. my technique may explain why i've had a hard time getting my upperbody inside the curve but it has worked well for me.


i would suggest trying to weight the outside peg while in a large radius curve & see what happens. you will feel your body twist & you lose your anchor. i do weight the outside peg as i reach the apex and start to pick the bike up & get on the gas.

i beleive the most important thing in hanging off is really getting your weight to the inside of the curve. i think my technique is geared for an aggressive street rider but as i'm finding out riding at the track i really need to let go of the bars and trust the strength in my legs ( outside leg ).
i've had a few golden moments where i really overcooked a corner and needed to get the bike down & get more off the bike. its a bit scary but once you feel it you know it's right.

my last track day i did on DOT race tires - it was amazing the grip i had - i can't wait till spring to get back out there.

as you can see in these pics - this was my first track day, but was my general technique in hanging off..... butt only.




it was great to see pictures and start to correct my obvious errors.
in the following pics you can see i've worked on getting my upper body down but was very suprised how much of my upper body was still inline with the tank. i beleive the problem is that i'm still gripping the bars ( using my upper body ). i need to let go, so to speak. i feel i'm at a real tipping point. i keep a good lean angle and to progress i need to pick up the speed.... and thats a double edge sword.

tim

[madentaiwn]

nice pic man, I guess the best teacher can be a nice digital camera.. you can only correct what you see is wrong.

p.s. were you wearing motorcross boots? I was thinking about buying a pair because it is usually cheaper then Racing boots (when motorcycle-superstore have a big sale) Does it matter if you wear racing boot vs a motorcross boot?

[trinc]

they are street/racing boots - alpinestars SM-X plus.

tim

[free rider]

..

[madentaiwn]

I just wanted to bring some life back to this old thread. I finally got the a chance to read Sport Riding technique and the author says to keep your weight on the inside peg and hold yourself up with the outside knee. I can see that this is all proved by the above pictures. I can also see that keeping your weight on the outside will help stablize the bike rather it is a knee on the tank or a foot on the outside pegs. Either way, with my stock engine on the kat, I don't think I would have to worry about spinning out the rear unless I was totally reckless (stand 1 footed going to a turn).

However, I don't think that I will ever try this in the streets. For now, I will just do my best to keep the rubber side down by going 5mph slower then what I should be doing and save the extreme hang off for the track.

Has anyone have any track experience on the kat? I'm a little worried about the stopping power of the stock breaks.

[The CyberPoet]

We used to (back the KP days) have a guy in Mexico City who raced his Kat in two heats a week on the club circuit. There's also a lot of riders here who do track days. Plus there's Let'sRide, who practically lives on Jennings (the track) in North Florida.

The stock brakes are reasonable if kept in good shape. In a track situation, the real issue is always whether the brakes will overheat, either glazing the pads or boiling the fluid. Wise precaution is to always put in fresh fluid before a track session/track day (because fresh fluids have higher boiling points than used fluids), and to use something with a very high dry boiling point (Castrol GT/LMA is what I use and what I'd use for a track event on a Kat).
The real threat is using higher friction rate pads (such as HH pads), which while generating more grab, also generate more heat and may not give the brake system enough time to cool down between brake applications. The stock pads are GG, and that should be sufficient on all but the tightest/smallest of tracks (the smaller the track, the closer the curves are together; the the closer the curves, the more often you are on the brakes).

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet