AFAIK, a lot depends on riding position. street bikes always have more relaxed and comfi riding position than sportsbike where most of your upper body weight is on your wrist. street bikes are more rider friendly in terms of body positioning for longer riding hours.

^^ How about torque? Street bikes concentrate it in the low to mid revs for stop and go traffic whereas sports bikes would make power higher up.

You'd also have a neutral seating position in the street bikes to avoid crouching.

Add in the absence of fairings on street bikes for low-maintenance/low-cost/style reasons.

exactly.....

Let us see the different segments of bikes.


Some combinations that are present in the market:

Street +Sport = ER6N,GSXF,CBF
Street + Off-road = KTM Duke 690, etc.
Street + Cruiser = Vmax, MT 01.
Super street or muscle bike = MT 01, Bking, Z1000, CB1300 etc.

I believe the first motorcycle in the world was a street bike. All others are its derivations. And many new categories are created by some manufacturers. As written above.

Here we see the riding triangle. It denotes the posture while riding.


The rake angle and turning radius makes a bike flickable. Larger is unstable. Sportsbikes cannot turn handle beyond certain limit because of the fairing.
Moreover, Superbike, Motocross and Supermoto are name of racing events from which the bikes get their names.

Applause.. great stuff Nitro.

Wow, I love to keep talking about these things all through the day. I'm hooked up to this thread now. Looking forward to learn a lot & contribute my 2 cents into this. All the more you put one of my favourite bike's pic first on this thread - Ducati Monsty

I love street bikes & cruisers because of the sitting posture & they are good on your back. Like the Bonneville & our own home grown RE. Lately I've been observing that the design of the street bikes such as Monster & Hornet lead to a slight bend in the back when compared to streets such as Bonneville. Why is that? Or are they a different category?

^ You are right. In fact the general style of a streetbike is getting inclined towards sportier and agressive riding stance. Will talk about it in the next post.

Check out this video. Kawasaki say that they wanted a new streetbike style and not a naked sportsbike!
YouTube - Kawasaki Z1000 2010

Thanks a lot Payeng bhai!

Thanks. I was wondering. I was confused as per original poster's comments below. All engine seems to be more or less positioned similarly with the exception of cruiser which is lower than the other two but not necessarily below the hubs. Perhaps he meant to say the ground clearance. If you examine especially the sports bike, the lower portion of the bike consists of exhaust system and fairing and not engine.

I dont mean to interrupt the classification, but now adays non of the classes is defined. there is a fine line between sports, cruisers,street etc. and all other classes of motorcycles which the bikes that are coming up worldwide tend to remove easily.
companies are coming up with designes which cannot be said strictly sports or strictly street sports or street cruisers.

where V-rod and V-max come in the dragsters category..the B-king...being of the similar origin is not a dragster more than it is a naked street bike. I thing the MT-01 is more closer to the B-king than the V-max.
Dragsters: are cruisers which have a slighly sporty sitting position for fast riding.

Wanted to correct the statement here(the above one in bold)...along with the rake angle..the wheelbase has a major part to play in flickability of a bike. Larger rake angle is not exactly unstable...in another way you can say a shorter angle gives more handling ability than larger one. cruisers have a higher rake angle and due to the dimensions of the bike,they are more stable at higher speeds.
its not that "Sportsbikes cannot turn handle beyond certain limit " but they are not meant to turn the handle too much...the reason is not putting up the fairing on the bike...but they are made to turn at higher speeds...which requires banking(or leaning) more than the turning of the handle...so they just dont have it because they dont require them.
and compared to street bike...the handle doesnt turn over a larger angle..its just that since the handle bars are far off wider...so it looks as if the street bike handle covers a larger angle of rotation.
apart from that the different in the turning of the handle is not as much as it looks to be.

one thing i would like to highlight is that ...the design of a bike starts from what it is going to be used for. that starts off the type of engine it requires. then a similar chassis required to hold the engine...and then the body work.
the final bike that we all come across is actually a mix between the actual design and the practical model. though intial design greatly influences the outcome...its never the actual thing that comes into production.

This is good stuff... bookmarking this now!

Take a look at the illustration below. Been wondering about this how angle of rake can change characteristics of bike. I understand that more angle(or is that less angle. Am no geometry expert. Anyway the idea is when rake is angled further away from perpendicular 90 degrees) will increase wheelbase. Closer to 90 degs. will decrease wheelbase and hence alter characteristics. This I know and is NOT my question.

My question is, since different angle in rake will make the front tyre lean at an angle against the road when handle is turned. Meaning, as angle moves further away from 90 degs., the front tyre will lean more and more and vice versa. In what manner does this affect the characteristic of the bike?

See picture below. It will illustrate my question.

I am no expert but the first two things that came in my mind were the first is the RTR, and the second is the avenger...
Flickability vs Cruising..

Is that right?

Good question..would love to answer this one.
first..lets consider the first picture...when you lean the bike left or right...it directly affects the tyre leaning ( here the "centre of rotation", would be the point of contact between the tyre and the road) as it is more closer to perpendicular. In rotational motion physics...the force acted upon a rotating body(the tyre in this case) is total force acted upon the perpendicular from the centre of rotation and not only the magnitude of the force .
In the picture given below...if rake angle(A) is more closer to the perpendicular..thus small force is required to rotate the wheel by angle B.


Similarly in the second case (larger rake angle)
since the rake angle is more and inturn distance from the normal is more, the force required to rotate the wheel by angle B is more.

This is why shorter rake angles respond more quickly (as less movement is required to produce a large effect) than compared to larger rake angle motorcycles(where more movement is required to produce the same effect).

You can say that. Take the case of the second example (cruiser). If you are taking a turn and lean the bike, the front tyres will be leaning much more than the first example. Not that you would do some knee scraping stuff on a cruiser. Just wondering on the technical aspects and curious as to how much importance is given to it while designing a bike in relation to its handling characteristics. Would a couple of millimeters in a racing sports bike make a difference?

Another interesting thing is how the rear suspension also alters the wheelbase when the suspension goes up and down and can affect handling. Heard about manufacturers design some bike to make wheelbase remain constant during suspension play.

its not only the banking of the motorcycle that decides the turning speed.
30 degree banking on a shorter wheelbase bike covers a larger angle than a 30 degree banking larger wheelbase bike. both travelling at the same speed and in the same interval of time.

Consider the pitcure below. a shorter wheelbase bike following AB path at say 50 kmph at 30 degree banking and a larger wheelbase bike following path CD at same speed(50kmph) and same 30 degree of banking.


since both are at same speed but the distance AB is less than CD...thus the shorter wheelbase bike will cover the same angle in lesser time( though travelling at the same speed).
What im emphasising on is that its only only the banking of a few degrees that is making the difference here..but its actually the wheel base.
So a few degree banking gives a faster turning in shorter wheelbase bikes than it does in larger wheelbase bikes.