Total Motorcycle Community Forums

It not a matter of "you WILL drop your bike", it's a matter of "there is a damn good chance it will happen"

Accidents happen, just because some people are lucky enough to avoid it doen't mean everyone can.

People are just trying to put it into perspective. Would you really want to take the chance with a $15000 bike or a $1000 bike. If you drop a $1000 bike, who cares, pick it up and go, its depreciated maybe $47.50. Drop a $15000 bike, now its depreciated $4750 and now your baby is hurting bad.

In the end, if you buy used, practice and then sell, 99.9% of the time you havn't lost any money. Then go out and buy you're dream bike, without the underlying fear of wrecking it.

The guys here are just trying to protect new riders from financial loss and embarassement that might shy them away from the sport.

If someone is still dead set against getting a used bike, whatever, we're just trying to help people out.

Sometimes things add up quickly is all that we're saying. That's 400 lbs of steel balance on two postage stamp sized peices of rubber (contact surface) all it takes it a little oil at the stop light for you to put your foot down onto, or a little sand in a turn and the bike it out from under you.

I agree with the last two. There's folks who never dropped a bike. I'm one of them. I don't have near as many miles as a lot of folks here though. The point being if you polled all the people who ride and catalogued their drops, an outsized majority of them will have come young in a rider's experience. Newbies drop a lot of bikes. They don't all drop bikes.

Sevulturus wrote:That's 400 lbs of steel balance on two postage stamp sized peices of rubber (contact surface) ...

Might want to let a little air out....

ronboskz650sr wrote:

Sevulturus wrote:That's 400 lbs of steel balance on two postage stamp sized peices of rubber (contact surface) ...

Might want to let a little air out....

No doubt! Or stop buying your tires at the local bicycle shop!

I think the "big bang" engine proponents in Motogp racing use 7 inches as the length of the contact patch. I saw a show once (can't remember which one, sorry) where Kenny Roberts mentiond " a footprint the size of a size 10 shoe at 200 mph" He might have said two of those, i can't really remember. Either way, I remember thinking "wow, I thought it was smaller than that. Still not much at speeds like that." Since each tire would have the 7 inch patch, I suppose it was two shoes.

The oil is a real hazard, like Sev said. Sand seems to be attracted to the curves around here, too. They bend the roads around farmers' property lines do avoid disrupting the bigger fields. So... you get a right followed later by a left (or vice versa) to put you back on course. The farmers, then build their driveways to come out on the curve (don't ask me why), so their tractor tires clean off on the pavement right where you want to ride. Once it rains, it washes to the inside of the curve, making the right handers pretty dicey sometimes. Takes some heads up riding on country roads around here, because some of them are really nice one day, and terrible the next.

Well, my motorcycle tires (for instance) require 44psi per tire. Since the bike weighs ~800lbs and, for the sake of argument, I weigh ~200lbs, that's 1,000lbs that the tires need to support with 44psi per tire. So, let's assume (once again for the sake of argument) that my bike has a perfect 50/50 weight bias front to back....that's 500lbs resting on each tire. So, mathematically it would take:

500/44 = 11.36 square inches of contact patch per tire to support the weight of my bike and me. I don't know how that compares to a size ten shoe, but it's much bigger than a postage stamp.....an American postage stamp anyway!

ZooTech wrote:

ronboskz650sr wrote:

Sevulturus wrote:That's 400 lbs of steel balance on two postage stamp sized peices of rubber (contact surface) ...

Might want to let a little air out....

No doubt! Or stop buying your tires at the local bicycle shop!

A bike under heavy cornering has the contact points of it's tires reduced to the point where they are about the same size as a postage stamp. Run out there and check how much of your tire is actually touching the pavement right now while it's on the side stand. Now check your tire pressure. There really isn't a lot holding it on there.

Sevulturus wrote:check how much of your tire is actually touching the pavement right now while it's on the side stand. Now check your tire pressure. There really isn't a lot holding it on there.

Yeah, because a lot of weight is ON the side stand. Check the size of your rear tire's contact patch while the bike is on the center stand...I'll bet it's somewhere around zero!

Don't need a center stand I have clearance on my bike.