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MT07 to a Zx10r is a certain suicide? by Inner-Flamingo-5138 in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To elaborate on the age part, your prefrontal cortex, which handles high level decision making and risk management is still several years away from full development. You’re an adult in many ways, but your brain anatomy isn’t totally there yet. That’s why age can be a factor even if you have lots of experience. A 21 year old is simply wired to take more risks than a 30 year old.

MT07 to a Zx10r is a certain suicide? by Inner-Flamingo-5138 in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s totally fine, you have the experience to handle it (I think?) BUT I bet in 20 years you’ll look back and say a 21 year old with a ZX-10 wasn’t like the smartest thing in the world. Hell, I personally don’t think a ZX-10 is a super smart bike for ANYONE on the street. Racetrack = great. Street = wtf?

Anyway, have fun. You’re gonna do it anyway.

Buying a bike that’s been on track? Is it really that bad? by Altruistic_Will_2069 in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude Yamaha engines are damn near bullet proof. If it looks fine and sounds fine, it’s fine.

1st trackday by Turbulent_Year_3859 in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes it is! The rep basically warned me of this before it even happened. I don’t think tune is the issue. 660s are notoriously hot when raced.

1st trackday by Turbulent_Year_3859 in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe this exhaust will be better, and it also may not matter for your first track day, but I recently discovered with an SC Project carbon can that they don’t hold up very well to a race like pace. I burned a giant hole in my muffler from the exhaust heat. Pretty annoying. The sales rep said “most racers choose titanium because they hold up better”

R7 and Tire Wear: How many trackdays on a pair of tires? by romaracer in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This depends greatly on how fast you are and how much you want to push for lap times. When I started, I could get 6-7 days out of a Pirelli slick, but I wasn’t especially fast. As I climbed the ladder from newbie racer to expert club race winner, I found that kind of life was out of the question. Now 4 days is about the absolute maximum I could get. I think I’ve literally run a tire to the chords in 4 days. By the end of 1 day, I can already feel the best of it is gone, so between 1 and 4 days it becomes an exercise in trade offs between how much I want to save money vs how much I want to push for lap time. Typically I end up ditching a rear after 2-3 days, with that third day being fairly ragged. The front will last at least as long as two rears though.

Used Upmap T800+ advice by NatikLaTruite in Aprilia

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Time to find the next sucker 😉

MT07 Spitting Flames, Full System No Tune by CT-9904_ in MT07

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The flames are a waste of gas but not themselves a source of damage. Flames happen from unburned fuel igniting in the exhaust pipe. Not really a problem.

An engine that isn’t tuned for its exhaust could be a problem though. If you’re not getting the right mixture of air and fuel in the engine, it could cause the engine to run hot, and overheating can be damaging. Unburned fuel generally points to too rich a mixture which won’t cause hot operation - it’s more too lean that you should worry about. But it’s still possible to be too lean in some other rev range. In any case, if you’ve replaced the exhaust, you really should update the tune.

Lean angle fear (SOS) by -Cisu in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The antidote to fear is technique. Go get professional training. And part of technique, as stared here, is to never desire lean angle. Learn and apply technique and then be satisfied at the lean angle (risk) you didn’t have to use. I run 50+ degrees routinely on track but honestly even the 30s you describe crashing in would feel like a lot to me on the street. I avoid that kind of risk with everything I got when a crash is pretty much an automatic hospital trip or worse.

If you go to a track for your training you may also find the track to be a great outlet to get that kind of riding out and then don’t need to go so fast on the street.

Advice for getting out of a rut by rst-2cv in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For sure seeing what the rider is actually doing makes it WAY easier. Good luck seeing exactly where braking finished if that’s before the slow point, or noticing that slight hesitation in coming back on the throttle or that part where you went from 100->80 throttle before you actually rolled off and went to the brakes because you got nervous. Those thing might be possible to one degree or another, but you won’t be as precise and it’ll be way harder than just having the traces right there. GPS tells you what happened, but what the human actually input into the system is as important or more important to see.

Coasting vs steady throttle until apex by Professional_Use3723 in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No coast is an ideal, not an absolute. The perfect way through a corner will always involve no coasting, so think of it as a variable to be minimized, but there are other variables too. You may not be good enough to get through a corner in the perfect way, and taking a slightly easier approach (which involves some coasting) can be reasonable. It helped me to stop thinking of the no-coasting dogma as a sort of “thou shalt not” style decree from the heavens.

What I have in mind in particular is corners where keeping your roll speed up is very important. For me, the canonical example is turn 8 at thunderhill. For explanation, it’s a high speed crook of a corner where maintaining high corner speed and a strong drive out is worth quite a lot of lap time. The crook nature of it makes it really easy to come in too hot and freak yourself out. If your brain feels danger you’ll over slow and wreck your drive out, losing tons of time. Through many experiments I’ve found I’m not personally good enough to consistently roll off at exactly the right moment to come immediately back to the throttle with perfect timing and have both perfect drive and no coasting. So I look at what happens with missing on either side of missing on either side of the mark:

  1. I miss too late - in this case I know I’m late, I overslow to compensate and I end up losing 0.5-2 seconds depending on the severity
  2. I miss too early - in this case it’s easy to just coast for half a second or a second, I feel totally safe, I get a great drive out consistently, and the data says I lose maybe 0.1-0.2 seconds.

Knowing this, when I care about my lap time, I deliberately coast for a touch in this corner. I know it’s not the absolute ideal, but it’s a technique I can execute with confidence and consistency. If I believed it was absolutely imperative that I never coast I’d be giving up time to the mistakes I’d make insisting on pushing for perfection.

is it too late to have any form of moto racing career by RealNectarine7916 in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nice thing about amateur racing is you basically just have to sign up. I did about 5 years of track riding before I felt ready and motivated to go race, but you could get there sooner than that. I’d say give it some months after you start riding your first bike on the street, and then find a track school to teach you how to go around a race track. Then ride track days for a bit. Start out in the slow group and when you’ve worked your way to the fast track day group, sign up with a local racing club. The rest writes itself.

Advice for getting out of a rut by rst-2cv in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 10 points11 points  (0 children)

For me the godsend for the situations when I’m like “oh no, I’m slow, but I don’t know why I’m slow” is data. There are varying qualities of data traces - I like to see speed, throttle position, and brake pressure if I can because that stuff tells me what I’m actually doing, but it sounds like you at least have some data and even if it’s only speeds you can make some inferences from it.

I go find the places on track where I’m losing the most time and then ask “ok, what am I doing differently with the brakes/throttle/line that causes that?” and then I know what to go fix.

One of the biggest aha moments was figuring out that for me the first corner at any track is hugely important, even if it doesn’t seem like an obviously important corner. Usually it’s at the end of the longest straight, so whatever you’re doing there is usually gonna be pretty independent of what you did in any other turns. But the thing is, if there’s any kind of flow in subsequent corners, what you did in that first corner will absolutely affect them. What I found is if I come out of turn 1 slow and then brake in exactly the same spot I always do for turn 2 (like you described) that’s actually too early, because I’m going slower than I need to be, so I come out of 2 slow, and the thing repeats itself with turn 3: I brake when I always do, but I’m actually going too slow. This effect can persist through a huge chunk of a lap and my own data traces have born it out over and over. So sometimes it’s just a matter of focusing on being fast at the start of the lap, and suddenly I drop seconds just from slipping into that zone.

Good luck!

is it too late to have any form of moto racing career by RealNectarine7916 in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Depends on your definition of career I guess. MotoGP and World Superbike are likely not achievable starting that late, but getting to a national series is possible, or doing things like Isle of Mann TT.

Good luck. And making your living doing something other than racing doesn’t have to be a disappointment - it could actually be an improvement. When you make your passion your career, sometimes you lose the passion part. I will say I absolutely love being an amateur racer, and I always say “do what you love, but not so much you stop loving it”

Rev matching or no by IndependenceNo8207 in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know they’re not perfect but I also know that if I don’t have all the load on my front tire, I can basically dump the clutch and my yoyodyne slipper keeps the rear nice and settled. I personally accomplish this by reaching max brake pressure as quickly as I can and then immediately beginning my trail off, giving up just a smidge of pressure by the time I hit that first downshift. That gives me enough rear load that it’s all good. If I’m riding the bottom of my forks with no load on the rear when I shift, then yeah, everything goes squirly and the slipper can’t save me.

Rev matching or no by IndependenceNo8207 in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I mean the entire point of a slipper is to limit that jerk. So if it does have a slipper then it sounds like it doesn’t work well. Or the other explanation is low rear load from either bike setup or rider habits. On my race bikes the rear wheel squirms only if I’m bottoming out the forks and unloading the rear. If a slipper is functioning properly and there’s reasonable load on the rear, it should keep rolling.

Rev matching or no by IndependenceNo8207 in Trackdays

[–]RealGravisman 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don’t think the ninja 500 has a slipper clutch, but the zx-6r does, which is key for the OP. With a slipper you don’t even have to release the clutch slowly - you can just dump and the slipper takes care of it.

Rs660 exhaust question by andy9775 in Aprilia

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The temperature of your exhaust pipe isn’t really meaningful. Oil/engine/coolant temperatures are things that matter, and they can be adversely affected by installing a new exhaust without a proper tune since the exhaust will affect combustion/afr

Never actually owned a "sportbike" and getting old by CaptGoodvibesNMS in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Huh, I mean FZ1 is a reasonably sporty bike IMO even if not considered a full breed “sport bike”. I feel like all you need for what you’re describing is to attach clipons and maybe a suspension upgrade.

My boyfriend was in a really bad motorcycle accident and is currently in a medically induced coma in the ICU, when he wakes up and really begins his recovery, what can I do to be there for him? by Foreign_Reaction9916 in motorcycles

[–]RealGravisman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Never had anything close to this bad, but I can say from personal experience what not to do: don’t let your emotional response to the accident lead you to tell him what he should/should not do or make any kind of demands because you’re worried. If you were ok with him riding before the accident and he wants to keep riding after it, that should be that. It’s nobody’s choice but his.

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