Is this actually true?

The answer is yes. I know someone who actually scrapped a hole through the front of his header from the crazy lean he was doing. His bike is a 2004 VFR 800 but it had a lot of money in the suspension.

 

when I used to live in NJ and rode NY state roads regularly, I ground down the foot peg nuts and beyond, and a few times, I scraped the metal lower fairing, (if you own a 93 you know what I am taking about.)

Now, living in south FL and having hit the tarmac both on the street and on the track, I have grown more conservative, (not to mention that you can count the really good turns here on both hands.) Age to makes you wiser...It helps if you have top suspension components too, but I have seen fast riders on shagged out equipment too...

btw, I ran pilot powers on my bike/the grip was amazing but they wore out in 4000 miles...I have Road 2s currently, second set actually. Bike just turned 78,000 miles today...

 

I had to remove my nuts and the spacers cause they dragged too much. Then the brake pedal took the beating. This was on the track tho so it doesn't count really.

Just to clarify, knees only! No elbows scraping here!

The 3rd gen drags its belly much easier that the 5th gen but even it comes up short so you have to get creative with the suspension and ride like a spider monkey to keep the quick boys entertained.

My only laps on a true liter sport bike were riding two up with Jason Pridmore on a gixer 1000. That was off the deep end crazy. How that bike kept grip with the two of us on board is beyond me. It didn't drag anything either which really is amazing. I never dragged the pegs on my Ducati. It had mucho clearance!!

 

OUCH! One octave? More?

 

A small divergence from the main thrust of this thread for our harleydood friends.. Chicken Strips are not what you had for dinner last night even though they were soaked in ketchup and the stains are still on your leathers.

Now we return to our regular programming.

 

i'm full accord with the consensus of this thread. it's not the grip of the tires or the capability of the bike, i worry more about road debris and other surprises more than anything during corners. especially now because of all the salt/pebbles they dump on the roads during winter.

 

But how do you keep your testicles from dragging on the track?

Rollin

 

Ball sliders? If you're female and well endowed I suppose you could drag a tit if you leaned far enough

 

Texticles at the ton?

 

Yes its true, but not for all bikes all of the time ! Many people are amazed at the lean angles achievable & having dragged the pegs on a few bikes on tracks it is fun. You can always put your bike on its wheels then get someone to hold it, get an 8x4 thin ply sheet & slide it up to the wheels & then lift it until it hits the hero blobs as we call them in the UK Then measure the angle, this is how far over your bike can go before the indicators tell you to be careful, if you go much further something solid will hit ground & could lever one or both wheels off the ground ! it only takes a small bump to compress the suspension a little to do this, so be careful.

It's easier on the track, as you can take the same corner over & over again building confidence & the grip levels will not change between each pass of the corner, so its predictable. But many people fail to get down far enough, due to counter steering, as most people DON'T understand it, even those who THINK they do.
Counter steering is only used to initiate a turn, i.e riding in a straight line, pull left bar (counter steer) and the bike will fall to the right, but if you are paying attention, you will notice that the bars will now auto steer to the right as the bike rolls over, it has to or you will fall on your side & crash.

Check out the front views of those bikes leaning, the front wheel is pointing in the direction of the turn relative to the rear. So once in the turn, many people run wide, because they stop the bars reaching the auto angle they want to to service the turn relative to your lean angle. You can try this, find a constant radius turn you are familiar with, take it at normal speed, once leaned over, relax your grip on the bars & you should feel them steer more into the turn, so to the right if its a right hand turn, proving you are restricting the bikes ability to turn, so you could have gone faster for less effort & the bike would have been fine, even though you think you are at your limit.

It's counter intuative & as with many things thinking them through often produces a better result than your instincts ! If you think to question that, then just remember that of the 100's of thousands of years that humans have been on the planet we have ONLY been able to attempt this for the last 100years & thus you DON'T have any instincts for this ! And only a handful of years experience, which was limited to what you thought of yourself or what others told you ! Lack of exposure to others thoughts or facts restricts our ability to learn. The internet in the greatest knowledge sharing device ever invented !

Have a good learning day.

 

I think I missed that last turn. Next exit is 25 miles..

 

[video=youtube;dsAQZ_x0Xzg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsAQZ_x0Xzg[/video]


EXCELLENT video on cornering, countersteering, picking your line, etc. Lots of other good info in there, too.

 

Yes it's true, but not advisable on the street ! On early track days I did, my mates commented on my chicken strips, but the truth was I was still cornering faster than them on my F4, even though they'd had used all the tyre. When I followed them, it was because they were forcing the bike down rather than hanging off the inside like me.
Either way keep in rubber side down

 

All this tire talk is great for street. Race tires are different. Same deal with cars.

 

Good point. I remember one of our local boys made good (Sheridan Morias, I think) getting a ride in the superbike race a few years back and saying how good the tyres were compared to what he had been used to.

edit - by local boy I mean South African. Sheridan Morais is not from my town, nor do I know him personally.

 

We have local boys here. Girls too. Some have never been off the block. This from very short conversations with same.. I wonder what today's PC term has replaced "local boy"?

As an example, at a sanctioned "track day" try showing up with slicks. Or, attending one of the many excellent schools try showing up with rubber that shouldn't be on the road.

Another example of speciality in tires are qualifying tires. Some only good for 2-3-4-5 laps. Only the big boys can even get these.

 

One thing I hate about some of the extreme lean angle photos is that they are shot with a slight camera rotation in the same direction as the lean, thus giving a rather obvious optical illusion. Most of these are pretty good actually, but there is one on the previous page that is a good example of what I mean.

 

Some of those lean angles mirror the lean angle some dealers bend us over sawhorses. Both sell bikes..

For the photo buffs. Follow the local track photographer around for awhile. See how they operate. A decent camera with a long lens can take great images if used well. One trick shooting fast moving stuff is to pre-focus a spot where the vehicle will be and use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action. Don't try to BS with the photog during a race. They will not be "nice" .