Re: Braking

Very Well Explained [MENTION=43081]The Mountain[/MENTION] This is what i was Looking forward to. I have few more things that bother me. While braking and speed retardation are almost the same, I want to understand that in a situation that occurs almost everytime I ride in Indian roads, there are way too many obstacles on the road and especially on a single lane it becomes twice that. I first slow down for a pot hole and before I can recover from it there is an autowala or a cab crossing either with or without signal and just to escape them I brake again and swerve only to encounter another biker or passerby squeeze through the gap. Its almost like a pumping action for the brakes or tap and release here. To do just such an action almost multiple times is in itself a surplus task and to top it off by concentrating on the road gives an edge on my riding skills. Most of my ride now a days comes to one such panic situation in a days ride for me. My point being that, is there an efficient way to brake or slow down and I want to ask if my situation which demands to keep having to pull clutch for the constant upshifts and downshifts and keep braking in city peak hour traffic effect the brakes and clutch plate too much. I know i may be asking for a solution to a situation that is inevitable in day to day rides, but is there a proper way to ride sanely in such conditions. Plus another basic question is (I may be stupid for an obvious answer) how does tyre pressure affect your braking. lower tyre pressure higher contact patch= Good braking or optimum pressure = optimum braking. How often should i check my tyre pressure to stay in the ideal riding and optimum braking condition? Please ignore my stupidity and please do give a solution guys?

Re: Braking

The only way to deal with the kind of obstacles you're talking about, is to learn to anticipate. You have to be able to look farther down the road, and to be able to extrapolate what things will do. This, again, is something taught in the US Motorcycle Safety Foundation beginner course. They show you pictures, and you have to identify the potential hazards so you can prepare yourself (the car waiting at a side street intersection, the child playing with a ball near the road, the pothole, the oncoming truck).

The best analogy I can give is to the "Sherlock Holmes" movie with Robert Downey Jr. where you can hear his thoughts as he thinks through everything that's about to happen in the next few minutes of some action scene. So you have to become Sherlock Holmes in a way, and look at what you're about to come up to, and think "ok, that pothole ahead means I have to shift closer to the center of the road, but there's an autorickshaw about to make a U-turn there, so I need to either slow down, or move to pass behind him if he turns early; once I'm past him, I'll have to deal with that buda on the bicycle who is wobbling along in the middle of the lane, and avoid that idiot who is almost certainly going to pull onto the road from the shoulder without even looking to see if anyone's coming" etc etc.

This is again why it's important to be mentally "riding" about 150 meters further down the road than where you are. Humans aren't evolved (yet) to make split-second decisions fast enough to pilot a motor vehicle reactively. You have to be proactive, like playing chess; plan your ride several moves ahead so you have time to make all the decisions necessary to get through a complicated maneuver. There will always be something you didn't anticipate, but if you've already figured out what to do with the things you *can* anticipate, you won't be overwhelmed by the one thing you couldn't.

Re: Braking

1) Gear : In the above condition or any such obstacle filled turns . You need to be in correct gear. it needs to keep you in the lower end of the power band. So you can roll off the throttle. Slowing the bike down with some engine braking. Roll on the gas to avoid a obstacle which will give you the punch to get around it fast.

2) As you lean into a corner a motorcycle with constant throttle will slow down naturally as the circumference of the tire is less in the edge than the middle of the tire. So for the same speed when leaning the bike automatically will slow down.

3) Even though you might not brake past tip in, you can do a concept of trail braking. After tip in instead of a full release you slowly release the brake and the circumference reduces . You will be surprised how much speed one can cut down as both the above things happen.

4) Looking through the turn is important but how far is dependent on the speed you carry. I bet in Indian conditions it cannot be too far then through the turn above 20 ft.
for example : I approach a turn at 200 kmph, i take the turn at 80km. I do not brake till i am close to my braking point . Its full brake,slam gears down and lean .
Now its a double apexing. I actually give it hard gas to pull the bike outside as i lean the bike up and me hanging off and then do a trail braking as i hit turn 2 slowing to 80 again.

I recommend you tube channels.riding in the zone. riding in zone is a very road strategy based i like his book as it always builds good technique .

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You got this wrong.

Tires works better when they reach their optimal temperature. Tire pressure effects in a part how to reach that temp. In the street you need to higher pressure as the tire is running for longer period of time and most street tires are build to operate lower operating temp. They are harder and have more silica for water expulsion. When you run too low they give weird sensation due to higher temp and bigger contact patchs .

I run my fjr at 38 front/42 rear psi on the street. Same bike on the track i ran 33/33 . its a pig at 650 lbs.
on my sv650 34F/36R on the street but i will go down to 30/30 on the track. I check it after a session and will see it as high as 36 due to heat of the track and the amount braking and gas being given and will drop it.

Track temp is another thing i have to deal with. unlike a covered road with traffic the track temp is usually very high even on cold days with sun.

Re: Braking

Even cornering at the very sedate speed of 40km/h, you're covering more than 35 feet per second. Looking 20 feet ahead gives you about 0.6 seconds to react to anything you encounter in the roadway. Track braking/cornering is a completely different animal from road riding, there's really no comparison; on the track you're trying to maximize the time you spend on the throttle, so you want to brake as late as possible, and any traffic in your vicinity is extremely predictable. On the road, you want to brake much earlier, get your speed set, and visualize the corner and scan for obstacles, and then initiate the turn. That way, you can be looking beyond the turn to the road ahead, and are able to anticipate the inevitable random event. I use as my "model" for road cornering a curve near the house I lived in, in Bhubaneswar. It's a divided road, 3 lanes in each direction. The corner itself is slightly less sharp than a 90-deg angle, but it's not an intersection. In light traffic, it can be taken at upwards of 70km/h, though the more typical speed is closer to 50km/h. In most cases, I need very little braking. Even just downshifting a gear and using engine braking is often sufficient. There's a side road that joins the main road very close to the apex, and there's a cluster of shops there, so there's frequent traffic pulling onto or off of the road. Taking that curve like a racer would be a recipe for a serious wreck.

Re: Braking

One of my friend too. He 99% use front brake only.

He has Yamaha R15.

Re: Braking

He had changed 2-3 times brake pad of Front tyre and his R15 rear brake pad is still new and healthy.

Re: Braking