power/Speed on m/bike!

[waddycall]

Any other bikers been driving their car/van/whatever and had a bike come out of nowhere? Speeds best kept on the track methinks.

 

[brightspark]

from what ive seen lately quite a lot of blokes on big bikes aren't fit to be on any road by there style of there riding I dunno who they think there trying to impress but its not working . I still have and ride my 750 Norton that ive had since I was 17 and now 61 . its good for120mph and the handlings excellent on it .the brakes are a bit of a let down and skinny tt100 tires but that's all

 

[roofman]

Bikes becoming sportier and faster on roads with increasing number of cars being driven by people who by the grace of god have passed there tests somehow..put that lot into the cooking pot and slowly add a few drops of mid-life born again bikers with 15K to spend and not ridden since there old Honda superdream rusted into a lump of red powder. Now theres a recipe for trouble and road rash iff ever there was one

 

[MrFluffy]

I prefer to refer to it as darwinism. F=MA, generally you just kill yourself.

 

[MrFluffy]

The real problem is getting caught in the backlash against born again bikers returning and getting mistake for them now I'm not in the first flash of youth.
Last time I got a roadside chat that ended in points, the coppers opening gambit was that he was fed up of people like me, returning to bikes and riding into his stockbroker/banker area (steynning in sussex...) and annoying the residents and having to be scraped off the scenery. I got the formal chat when I answered that I lived over there, and pointed to my house and that I had been off the road exactly 0 years since I was 15...

 

[dobbslc]

Funny that as I've also found the old Bill don't like it when you've just proved they're talking ballacks.

 

[johnakay]

its not the bikes that the problem its those who think they're barry sheen or rossi.
I was overtaken approaching a bend and on an incline when these silly b*ggers doing this not knowing what coming the other way.
hell it was only second's so why risk being taken out ?? yes I like to go fast but only when its safe to do so and 80/90 mph is plenty fast enough for me.
ride around for a few hours at 50mph and then open up to 80mph you'll soon see the difference.
as for these flowers on the fences/walls quite few of them are bikers. especially on popular bikers rout.
they go way beyond their capability following their mates. to busy looking at what their mates are doing and trying to keep up.
I see it every time I'm on these roads.
that is why we avoid these popular routs on weekends.
my nc has 50bhp and 50 torque my next bike has about 75 bhp and 50 torque not a great deal difference between the 2.

 

[roofman]

1998 and 9 of us went for a run to wigan on a sunny sunday morning...by 2.30pm i was kicking body parts into a heap so the ambulance men could put them into 1 bag. My mate on a 7/11 hit a hiace van doing 55mph head on at 100mph on a blind bend and pushed the van back 12ft,the driver was left in a wheelchair for life i believe. It was me who had to call my mates wife from the mortury to say what happend. At the inquest the coroner took 10 whole mins to go through all the injurys inflicted on the rider which consisted in every single bone in his body being smashed and organs exploding....Death by mis-adventure. Ride safe guys and RIP Paul

 

[Member 66061]

I survived a head on, wrote off a Yaris and my Gixxer 1100. I was only doing 60 and managed to grab a handful of brake before impact, still somersaulted the car and flew another couple of car lengths into the verge. The sound of the impact was like being in a small empty room and a heavy door being slammed and glass being broken. Got a bit of a gammy knee now, but cos i was wearing proper gear and not speeding, i got away with it.

 

[Pete.]

its not the bikes that the problem its those who think they're barry sheen or rossi.
I was overtaken approaching a bend and on an incline when these silly b*ggers doing this not knowing what coming the other way.
hell it was only second's so why risk being taken out ?? yes I like to go fast but only when its safe to do so and 80/90 mph is plenty fast enough for me.
ride around for a few hours at 50mph and then open up to 80mph you'll soon see the difference.
as for these flowers on the fences/walls quite few of them are bikers. especially on popular bikers rout.
they go way beyond their capability following their mates. to busy looking at what their mates are doing and trying to keep up.
I see it every time I'm on these roads.
that is why we avoid these popular routs on weekends.
my nc has 50bhp and 50 torque my next bike has about 75 bhp and 50 torque not a great deal difference between the 2.

If I can make a constructive observation John.

You (not just you - it's you, me, everyone) only notice the bikes that are doing something you consider to be irresponsible, or at least above the ordinary. There are a lot of riders on the road who don't but they blend with the scenery and you just don't notice them. This might be what leads you to conclude that bigger, more powerful bikes are unnecessary and a hazard. Unnecessary - yes. Who needs a big bike, the latest phone, a 60 inch telly? No-one NEEDS them it's a matter of choice, often driven by one-upmanship but then that's a choice too. But hazardou? No, the bike isn't the hazard at all.

Every bike out there has a throttle, same as every car and it'll only go as fast as the person wills it. You can't blame the bike for the rider and you can't say that the person taking corners dangerously is using the full amount of the power the bike has to give. True, riders are silly, especially weekend riders who routinely go out with their mates and partake in actions of derring-do up to silly levels, but it's not the bike's fault.

 

[atomant48]

I think we should have a mig-welding forum race/trackday/whatever

As long as you don't mind me trickling round going thump thump thump on the GS id be keen!

 

[MrFluffy]

I had my knee driven through the fuel tank on my gpx600r and it twisted my ankle round so far 2 golf ball sized haematoma's formed on my ankle that took 6 months of physio and heatlamp sessions to break up, and it wrote the car that drove into the side of me off when I was going straight and he couldn't be arsed waiting for me to turn, putting a ripple in the windscreen pillar (metro). At 28mph.
His excuse? he said I was going so slow he thought I was going to let him go in front of me. When in reality I was almost at the end of my road and had begun to switch off mentally and just expected him to wait 0.02 seconds longer for me to pass completely. yes (lack of ) speed can be pretty dangerous too.
My brother had his leg driven through his pelvis and can't bend in the centre and has to have a specially adapted car. At 26mph on a cb250n wet dream when someone reversed out their drive without even looking.
I'm with Pete, what looks scary on the outside is occasionally not as risky as it looks. Startling and unnerving if your not expecting it mind.

 

[the snooper]

just expected him to wait 0.02 seconds longer for me to pass completely. yes (lack of ) speed can be pretty dangerous too.

in them situations hindsight kicks in after the event, if only I hadn't gone that way, if only I had gone a little faster / slower I would have missed that, its purely down to circumstance and a chain of events, you could say had you been going faster and missed that car altogether you could have been killed by the next car, we all know somethings can be avoided but there are always those that will happen and when it does the what ifs kick in

 

[MrFluffy]

I think snooper my point is when your making progress, your very alert with all your wits about you ready to react to danger because if you dont, its you that your going to kill. When your bimbling along minding your own business looking at the scenery, none of this is occuring and its difficult to stay focused to the same extent, and thats when all my near death or other vehicle involved crashes have happened.

Its still the actual point that statistically there is no correlation between performance and accident rates. Which is the entire reason the FFVE took the French gov to the EU court of justice as they made the 100hp limit out of hysteria and have been unable to back it up with fact despite years of trying to.

Its a throttle, it works both ways, you have to respect bigger stuff with more performance and use it appropriately yes. But thats a healthy respect. Or you end up dead. If you ride something with 100+ hp, you discover this need for respect of the conditions quite quickly, especially banked over on damp mornings.

 

[the snooper]

I think snooper my point is when your making progress, your very alert with all your wits about you ready to react to danger because if you dont, its you that your going to kill. When your bimbling along minding your own business looking at the scenery, none of this is occuring and its difficult to stay focused to the same extent, and thats when all my near death or other vehicle involved crashes have happened.

Its still the actual point that statistically there is no correlation between performance and accident rates. Which is the entire reason the FFVE took the French gov to the EU court of justice as they made the 100hp limit out of hysteria and have been unable to back it up with fact despite years of trying to.

Its a throttle, it works both ways, you have to respect bigger stuff with more performance and use it appropriately yes. But thats a healthy respect. Or you end up dead. If you ride something with 100+ hp, you discover this need for respect of the conditions quite quickly, especially banked over on damp mornings.

I agree power can be a good thing, its up to the user whether its used properly, as for performance unless you go crazy and drive into a wall at ridiculous speed in a very short distance then its not an issue, even staying alert cant always save you but having your wits about you certainly gives you a much better chance

 

[MrFluffy]

skinny tt100 tires

I had to google if they still made k81's or if you were running tyres hard as boards and was surprised to find they do. I had visions of grip levels akin to those square profile speedmasters everyone had one knocking round at the back of the garden to be fitted in times of extreme poverty to stay legal.
Now all we need is metzler to bring back the ME99's or lasertec or whatever they call them now in a 19" for the front of 80's lardy ujm's and we're sorted. Big heavy front wheels and wide 'crosser bars to get enough leverage to get the gyro to change line on your GS1000. And so was born the cult of the streetfighter

I'm not racing in the mud, I fall off and hurt myself too much at slow speeds.

 

[Rannsachair]

Back in 1990 27 hp was too much for me when a car pulled out a side road in front of me in a 60 mph limit (Suspect the Avon Speedmasters did not help ), I caught my knee on the roof of the sales reps company cavalier though it was not too bad after a couple of operations then the 3 years to get money out of his insurers. No fun when 1 week into a new job and have to be off work 6 weeks then back on crutches....

Did give me an excuse for a better rebuild on another frame

Must be a sign of my age that I no longer lust after sportsbikes and feel 100 hp is plenty for me, the nature of the potholed roads round here made my KTM Adventure seem a sensible choice, then I bought an old Trident 900 and found I was clocking up more miles on it in a year, Then came fitting Daytona brakes, a Hagon shock, uprated fork springs and about to fit Daytona forks:

Not sure what I will get next, but my joints are not up to a sportsbike after 36 years riding