This is all good stuff here, I actually really enjoy this discussion.
Can y'all tell how I enjoy the banter here a bit?
So, don't take it too seriously, we'll all end up doing what we want anyway and have our believes etc..
Just don't push for a general mandatory equipment schedule here...... I have nothing really left that is simple, free, gives you plenty of room to screw up or not.... just what riding should be all about.
If you want it super duper ultra safe, there is your four wheeled friend with 22 air bags.
I saw a bumper sticker once "No airbags, die like a man". I thought it was hilarious.
I think this is a discussion that goes to the core of why we ride and not just about torque and traction control.
It is getting interesting and I want to assure you, although I might come across as a bit of a hard ass about pure riding, I accept, tolerate and hear and read everybody's opinion here and enjoy learning from your points of views.
This morning on my way to work, my rear slipped on dry asphalt in a turn without me having seen anything suspicious and I was smiling under my helmet.
I love having to balance this awesome torque with my wrist.
The reason why there are even articles about why one doesn't need a liter bike is that unless you have learned to actually outride a smaller bike, like a 500, 600 etc..... and really learned to ride the gusts out of it,
on a liter bike, a beginner is pretty much constantly busy to not get surprised by the high torque.
When I got my 1200, I intentionally made the bike powerslide to see what I am dealing with.
Every time it would start sliding, I practiced more to ease off more gradually and actually feel the point at within I could torque it out and just let it slide out into a straight line.
I am doing the same right now with the zero, which in my eyes is a high powered bike @gman669,
how else do you want to categorize 116lbs of torque from zero RPM and 0-60 in the high three or low four second range?
The speed? Who gives a sweet mosquitos bottom about speed after 60,70; 80?.
Any ape can go fast. The DSR is actually still nice and quick all the way up to top speed.
Regarding the consequences, a lot of the riders paint the picture of unless you control this immense torque with technology you're going to be caught by surprise one day and then die or damage yourself.
Why?
There was one poster here who said that it doesn't necessarily hold true that you have to go down eventually.
Although that didn't hold true for me on snow and ice etc.... harmless whipeouts are not crashes.... but I agree in its general tenor.
The amazing thrill of riding is exactly having to take responsibility to really make the right decisions all the time.
If I endorse students for their first solo in a helicopter, guess how many simulated engine failures, that I tried to surprise them with (not in a sneaky, dangerous way of course) on their last training flight, they have to catch.
Yes, 5 out of 5. There is no room for error. If they don't catch every single one, they are slated for rotor stall and be 100% dead if it would happen to them on their first solo flight.
This no room for errors applies to riding a bike and that is why I always see parallels to flying and especially flying helicopters.
You are a risk manager, and historically people are taking more risks when the consequences are either less severe for real or perceived.
I have a great example here.
When you learn to fly in a Hughes 300 (old military training helicopter model, Schweizer 300CB now), there is no throttle governor installed.
You constantly have to monitor, feel, sense, check and hear your rotor RPM since that is the equivalent of your indicated air speed in a fixed wing.
You go to slow, the wings stall and well, in a helicopter, you are 100% dead and it is ugly all the way down to the ground.
So, how do you prevent that?
Simple, don't let your rotor stall, ever.
How do you do that?
Learning to train your senses, your visual scan, your every fiber of your body to automatically control the throttle.
In an R22, you have a throttle governor. It automatically adjusts your engine RPM according to your collective settings and keeps your rotor RPM in the green.
It is a wonderful devise, but dangerous and deadly in a heart beat when it fails, or the pilot inadvertently turns it off (students like to do that sometimes, that is always fun) or you forget to turn it on.
Now, I learned to fly without a governor and guess what, my senses are like the ones from the little rodent from ice age that keeps on hunting the A-corn.
I love the fact that every time I get into one of those non augmented, non automated fully in contact with the air helicopters that it is ALL up to you if you live or die.
Like skydiving. You don't pull your shoot, you are dead... wonderful.
You have to learn where you simply cannot afford to have your bike lose control, period.
If you keep on crashing bikes, you should really listen to the message.
It is not for everyone and that is why it is so awesome.
I inserted the last paragraph before I wrote this here... so... ok, a little disjointed but.... here we go...
On a bike, you can afford to temp the threshold of your traction plenty and if you don't catch it, just go down for crying out loud, lay it down, slide a little.... get back up and simply never, yes, never do that when there is no room for that.
I let my ass slide all over the place and have been doing it for 33 years now, but I never do it where there is no chance to recover from serious damage.
That's all.
Within 33 years, I had one or two totally unexpected slides.
All the other ones I kind of knew they could happen like the one this morning, but guess what, if I would have laid it down, I wouldn't have been dead or seriously injured, hence..... it gave me the smile to work.
Yhafting,
Thanks for sharing my opinion about the issue having to disarm my bike of its protective measures all the time, and although I like your idea of making this "pickable" in the custom modes, it is really just a matter of time that all your high tech is failing and you'll have to update and update and get it scanned and repaired.
It is not a matter if that happens, it is when it happens.
I am already a bit freaked having no real autonomy anymore with this electrical drive train.
There is no fixing on the side of the road anymore, so we are all depending on a real solid, well tested and matured technology which the zero guys seem to have accomplished over the last 10 years.
If all bikes at some point "have to have" the latest and greates slip, slide, anti die features, engineers will be pushed to release systems quicker.
Heck, I have never even heard of cornering ABS, gosh... those Germans again......
I happen to be German, I mean for real... grew up there, and actually we Germans are purists by design thus we have made fun of people who bought automatic transmission cars for years and years.
We call them "Warmduscher", which loosely means, someone who absolutely declines to take anything but warm showers.
Oh well... I know, we are weird.
So, everybody, buy a 250 motocross bike, get some gear and ride the shit out of it and learn to deal with breaking traction.
Breaking traction and knowing when it is ok and when absolutely not will safe your life for real for decades to come.
Trusting your electronic blanket is a false sense of security.
And by the way, my first full lockups on the front happened just recently (a year ago or so) on my heavy 1200 sports bike.
I did really not anticipate it (they said the brakes suck on these Kawaski's), hell that thing began to head towards the ground.
Guess what, yes, I agree, there was no time to react, it was pure reflex from years of having experienced the little skids and slides of the front, the "almost" threw that thing down and so forth.
Without that constant fine tuning of my senses of how much you load a front tire, wich by the way is the key for fast track times, I would have gone down like a clown.
And for good measures, I repeated the same thing twice on this bike within two months, no idea why, I guess I didn't believe it the first two times, and every time, my body reacted exactly like I trained it to react.
I could have never learned that with freaking ABS...... no way, Jose......
I am sure I pinched a couple of people again and made them shake their heads..... Oh, this is fun...... lock it up, slide it, but don't do it where you end up with your foot wrapped around your neck.
Rider7
Author
Topic: Too much torque?? (Read 3900 times)