Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Hi Roncg

Fifteen or twenty miles per hour on a surface like this is perfectly possible - more for an experienced rider. I wouldn't try it though till you have found your confidence with yourself and with the bike. Stay close to your comfort zone at first. Going too slowly though will make you fearful of the situation. Find what you are comfortable with and open the bike up just a tiny bit more.

Riding rough surfaces is all about learning to trust the bike. Only then will you stop thinking that you have to do something about every tiny little slither. The rake and trail of the bike are designed to make it self-correcting - so long as you don't make sudden inputs, moving bikes like to stay upright and to some extent will correct themselves. You have to get used to that idea.

Having said that, you also have to know the bike's limits - you still have to watch out for leaning or turning on loose gravel, for example.

But I'm running on ahead here and talking about off-road riding. The kind of gravel you usually find on roads is best avoided if you can. If you can't - treat it with caution and follow the advice everyone has been giving.

(We're metric in the UK for everything except distances. We do metres for everything except roads and the clocks in our vehicles still do mph. )

I do 50mph on my parents gravel road UNLESS it was recently resurfaced then i dont do more than 25-30mph. BUT I have gotten used to how the bike feels on gravel. I do slow down to 15-20mph around curves though.

Hi ofblong

That's impressive. What kind of tyres do you have? And what's your breaking technique from that speed?

sv-wolf wrote:Hi ofblong

That's impressive. What kind of tyres do you have? And what's your breaking technique from that speed?

Stock tires the bike comes with. Cant remember off hand. breaking well I dont adjust anything just brake like I normally do on reg road. Which means not waiting till the last second to brake like my wife does on the van as well as coasting before I get to the stop sign..

I'm more upset about gravel dirtying up my bike and getting in places it shouldn't, that's why I don't ride on it.

I know what you mean, I cried myself to sleep for weeks after this.



Dirt everywhere.

Sometimes it pays to be a scruffy oik. My cleaning and polishing routine generally lasts for six months after getting a new bike. After that, the bike is for riding!

Great looking track skier.

The speed you are riding at you are certainly not in any danger. If it is gravel on top of pavement it is much harder to ride on. A well kept gravel road does not slow me down much at all. But I did grow up riding on these kinds of roads. It has been well said just never panic. Maybe don't use as much pressure on that front brake (a front end slide is tough). I locked up my wife's front brakes last week coming downhill on a bed of pine needles and dirt. I was very close to dumping it. I am glad that she asked me to ride both bikes down. She rode it up which is not quite as tricky. Was a hairpin turn with a pretty steep grade and off camber.

Skier wrote:I know what you mean, I cried myself to sleep for weeks after this.

Dirt everywhere.

Get a V-strom, V-stroms love to be dirty - that's what they're made for! I wash my 'strom, oh......... maybe once per year!!

Pssst... that was sarcasm. I've washed my bike once in the two years I've had it.