The CB1100 Community Forum

Like many of you, I had an image in my mind of the elite riders from magazines and photos navigating a corner with their knee literally dragging across the pavement. This has been something I wanted to experience for as long as I can remember. I know the bar has risen and now elite riders are dragging elbows and helmets and achieving 65 degrees of lean etc... So today on my fifth track experience, third on my CBR600 I had my butt half off the seat, leaned into the turn and for the first time felt and heard pavement.

We normally run three groups beginner intermediate and expert however because of numbers today we broke up into two. So I had expert/intermediate riders in my group on 1000cc motorcycles and the only person who managed to pass me was this guy with an Aprilia suit on an R1. However I did managed to pass him on the crooked bits but once we hit the straight there is no replacement for displacement. I currently tip the scales at 270 and there was a guy with my exact bike who was easily 80 lbs less and I lapped him twice in a session! I tried to help him out a bit telling him the revsi shift and gears in the corners because I could hear him shifting around 8000, good for the CB, not for the CBR. The weather was amazing and a great day was had by nearly all. There was a gentleman on a supermoto who got in over his head on a turn which happened to be at turn one after the longest straight so the highest speed, he left in the ambulance with non life threatening injuries.

As far as the knee goes it turns out it was a trivial hollow goal, it wasn’t the sensory nirvana I had day dreamed it to be, now that I’ve done it, if it ever happens again as a result of good riding so be it, but not something I’m intentionally trying to make happen again.

Wow, congrats. I will drag a foot occasionally and that is more than enough for me.

Congratulations bigsheep. The only way I'm ever likely to scrape a knee is by falling on it.

Bigsheep, good on you. Like the ferret, I've dragged a foot now and then, but not intentionally.

Once on an Edelweiss tour in the Alps, our guide, who was really hustling on a K1200LT, would lift his inside foot off the peg and extend it up towards the front of the bike, almost horizontal with the ground, when leaning into a curve. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen but he was super fast in the curves and claimed later his technique gave him more leaning clearance. Who was I to argue?

The closest I came to scraping my knee was in part un-wedging and lifting an YZF-R3 that fell on my CB today. The CB foot peg scraper stud ironically had paint from the fallen bike.

Congrats on your personal achievement. Definitely some track excitement.

Yikes! That doesn’t sound good, GO. Any damage to you or the bike?

The last time that I scraped my knee was when I was drunk and fell down trying to leave the bar.

Interesting thread, but those days are long over for me. However, once in a while I'll touch a toe in a corner.
These days I'm content to ride in a "spirited" manner, but feel no shame because I have virgin rubber (chicken strips?) at the very outside edge of my tires.
I prefer to call then sensible strips

If body position is correct and maximum lean angle achieved there should still be a small unused portion of the tire, maximum tire wear indicates lack of proper form.

(08-04-2019, 03:47 PM)Cormanus_imp Wrote: [ -> ]Yikes! That doesn’t sound good, GO. Any damage to you or the bike?

Incredibly no! I thought for sure there would be engine side cover gouges in the aluminum, or exhaust baffle dents or scrapes. In the mayhem, it seems (strangely) the fallen bike sustained all the damage, including the CB foot peg scraping its cowling.

It was just luck. The CB was "locked in position" until the other bike could be lifted up and away.