[Elijah]

I broke the news to my fiend that I crashed his bike over the weekend. He's being cool about it and we're already ordering parts to fix it. I'm thankful there wasn't much damage.

Anyway, here's the video of the crash. (This was the first session too. )

 

[Chevrasaki]

Ah man that's not so bad! Probably didn't help that it was the very first lap and the tires weren't completely warm. I keep hearing the phrase "If you ride, you/re going to fall" and I believe it. I don't go to the track and I don't really ride aggressively and even I have had a few "oops" moments. It happens.

My boring stories (Reading them is optional, seriously kind of boring)
I've set my 250 twice when I owned it, both were at 0MPH. First time, I was turning the bike around on a tiny dead end road. I had done a 4 point reverse/forward maneuver and was almost turned around, but I really needed to make it 5 point, just didn't feel like backing it up the hill again. Instead I thought, "I'll just ride forward, drop the tire off the road down the small 2 inch drop on to the gravel section then pop it back up once the bike is straight and I'll be on my way..." The second the front tire left the road, it dropped off with a bit of speed, I grabbed the front brake, and since the handlebars were facing full left it slid on the rocks and went down out from under me. In the process it managed to flip my shifter around 180 degrees so that it was on top of the foot peg. The shifter was bent in such a way where it would only shift up but not down.

Fun fact: You can actually operate the ninja 250 if you're careful enough, with only 6th gear. Just get a bit of a rolling start, gently feed in the power and slowly let the clutch out. You can fully engage 6th gear at around 25 mph. Which is at 2,400 rpm if I recall correctly that challenge was actually kind of fun.

The only other time I set my bike down I was still pretty new to riding, and if was the first time I took my 250 to the bank drive-thru ATM. I was thinking in my mind, should I do the ATM while still on the bike? or just park the bike and get off? I decided I was just going to get off and stand at the ATM. I rolled up to the ATM, popped the bike into neutral, reached for my wallet with my left hand, went to get off and guide the bike to the kickstand with my right hand but I forgot to put the kick stand down. At a certain point I felt the sense of it should have hit by now, but it was already way leaned over and in motion to go down. I softened the blow as much as possible and it hit the ground gently. Had to get my foot out from under it, then get it back up on the stand. Then it wouldn't start. Flooded the carbs haha so I waited around for about 30 minutes, and tried starting it periodically. Finally it fired and I rode away.

 

[algs26]

That sucks. At least you didn't do much worse than a lot of MotoGP riders.

Did the front or back let go? Were you on the brake or gas?

 

[Elijah]

That sucks. At least you didn't do much worse than a lot of MotoGP riders.

Did the front or back let go? Were you on the brake or gas?

The front just washed out.

Coming out of the pits turn 1 is just a throw away corner to set you up to get on line for turn 2. Since it was cold and I knew I'd have marginal grip I decided to take it easy through the turn, no point in pushing it. You can hear I'm engine braking in to the corner. As I approach the corner I'm on the throttle just enough to give the bike slight positive acceleration. (There's that sweet spot where the bike bounces between acceleration and engine braking ... which upsets the chassis big time. I didn't want to be there so I gave it a little gas.)

At this point I have no indication anything is wrong or I'm anywhere near the limit on the tires. (That could very well be because I wasn't familiar with that bike, but I didn't feel anything wrong. I was on my bike the next day and I could feel it sliding all over the place. I had two big slides in turn 8 and a massive one in turn 15. I ended up calling it a day since I wasn't thrilled with the idea of throwing another bike down the road. On a bike I was familiar with I had all kinds of warnings that things were wrong.)

Right after I passed the apex I thought about adding a little throttle and tipping the bike in a bit more. You can actually hear that I did add a touch of throttle and I did tip the bike in ever so slightly. The moment I started tipping the bike in a touch more the front end let go. I had zero warning. The next thing I knew I was on the ground. (Luckily I held on to the bike which prevented any of the upper fairing pieces or windscreen from hitting the pavement minimizing the damage $$$.)

You can see in the video I was actually going quite slow and being extremely conservative and still crashed. There's a good lesson in there about riding on cold tires. (Quite honestly, there was no way I was going to be able to get heat in those tires and find grip that weekend, it was just too cold for the tire I was on.)

 

[newcreation777]

That sucks bro. Thank God it wasn't too bad though. Maybe I missed it but what kind of tires is your friend running on that bike? I have Michelin Pilot Power 2CT's on my 2013 Z1000 and they require hardly any warm up time. They seem to stay very planted in the cold weather here in Colorado straight out of the garage. They're street tires mostly but can be used on the track too. Only problem is I only get a little over 4k out of a rear.

 

[Elijah]

That sucks bro. Thank God it wasn't too bad though. Maybe I missed it but what kind of tires is your friend running on that bike? I have Michelin Pilot Power 2CT's on my 2013 Z1000 and they require hardly any warm up time. They seem to stay very planted in the cold weather here in Colorado straight out of the garage. They're street tires mostly but can be used on the track too. Only problem is I only get a little over 4k out of a rear.

I just put a new set of Dunlop Q3's on the bike, basically sticker tires. (0 miles on 'em.)

Dunlop said the "ideal" conditions for the Q3 are 62F air temp and 62F track temp and above. The said you can use the tire down to 50/50F air/track temp but not to ride at your full potential. My translation of the last part of that statement is that grip is going to drop off significantly as the temperature drops.

My track conditions when I crashed were something like 46F air and 50F track.

Dunlop suggested running a RoadSmart II in those conditions since it's rated for temps 20F cooler than the Q3. What's kind of funny is the bike I rode on Sunday, I took a set of RoadSmart II's off it and put Q3's on for the track. (I was also sliding all over the place Sunday but didn't crash.) The RoadSmart II seemed to have pretty good grip in the cold. Then again I don't really push too hard when I ride the street.

 

[Sedition]

Really glad you're okay, man.

 

[Spacep0d]

Glad you're okay! I gasped when I saw the crash because I wasn't expecting it on the first turn. Damn. No warning indeed. What a beautiful track though.

 

[Elijah]

Glad you're okay! I gasped when I saw the crash because I wasn't expecting it on the first turn. Damn. No warning indeed. What a beautiful track though.

Come out and ride it with me in July!! It'll be warm (ok, hot) and I can promise we won't have cold tire issues.

 

[newcreation777]

I just put a new set of Dunlop Q3's on the bike, basically sticker tires. (0 miles on 'em.)

Dunlop said the "ideal" conditions for the Q3 are 62F air temp and 62F track temp and above. The said you can use the tire down to 50/50F air/track temp but not to ride at your full potential. My translation of the last part of that statement is that grip is going to drop off significantly as the temperature drops.

My track conditions when I crashed were something like 46F air and 50F track.

Dunlop suggested running a RoadSmart II in those conditions since it's rated for temps 20F cooler than the Q3. What's kind of funny is the bike I rode on Sunday, I took a set of RoadSmart II's off it and put Q3's on for the track. (I was also sliding all over the place Sunday but didn't crash.) The RoadSmart II seemed to have pretty good grip in the cold. Then again I don't really push too hard when I ride the street.

Gotcha. I see. Have you ever ran Michelins? Man I swear by them. I've always had great results with Michelin's on my bikes and car. I ran the street radials on my 300 when I had it and on the Z the Pilot Power 2ct's.

 

[Elijah]

Gotcha. I see. Have you ever ran Michelins? Man I swear by them. I've always had great results with Michelin's on my bikes and car. I ran the street radials on my 300 when I had it and on the Z the Pilot Power 2ct's.

I don't recall what the OEM tire was other than it was like riding a brick. Sure, I got 7500 miles out of it, but I felt like I was in the stone ages riding on a tire made from the finest granite.

I swapped the OEM tire for Q3's and they were heaps better. They only complaint I have about them is they are very squirmy. On a lot of the roads around here I feel a lot of motion from the back end and it's simply because of the road surface. I've gotten used to it though, so it really doesn't bother me too much. However, when I use up my current stack of Q3's I'm going to try a different tire.

Right now I have a RoadSmart II on the rear. It provides descent grip on the road and has lasted longer than the Q3. In the winter I can expect about 2000 miles from a Q3 before I'm on the cords. I've got 4000 miles on the RoadSmart II and it's squaring off but still has a lot of life in it.

I was actually thinking of trying a Bridgestone S21 on the bike next. (Track only.)

I've not considered a Michelin simply because I hate the damn things on my car. The last good tire I had on the car was a Yokohama YK420. Since then I've had Goodyear triple treads which I hated. I tried the Michelin MXV4 which also sucked but was better than the triple tread. I just replaced the tires again and the MXV4 wasn't available so I replaced it with a Premier A/S which is by far the worst tire I've ever had.

Some idiot thought that making a more fuel efficient tire was a good idea. To do that you have to decrease the tire's resistance to the road which, of course, means you decrease grip. The new tires have slid in places where bald-ass, on the wear bars, 62k mile MXV4's didn't. And, at low speeds too. Their wet weather traction sucks. On a particular stretch of highway I could feel the car trying to hydroplaned at 58MPH with this turd of a tire. On my bald MXV4's, in the same conditions, I didn't feel it until 65MPH. Not at all confidence inspiring. Their dry traction is marginal at best. I have no confidence that in an emergency situation these tires would be up to the task of keeping me safe. Oh yeah, they cost more, and for what, 2% better fuel economy at best? I can achieve that with the gas pedal. So, I'm sacrificing safety for what turns out to be a more expensive tire in the long run. Yeah, not a big fan of Michelin at all.

I would consider the Pilot Power CT2 but Michelin would have to be very forthcoming with certain information that's not on their website.

 

[Spacep0d]

Come out and ride it with me in July!! It'll be warm (ok, hot) and I can promise we won't have cold tire issues.

Would love to ride COTA sometime...or any of the amazing tracks we have here in the States. Barber too.