Modern motorcycles are COMPLETELY OUT OF HAND!

[sir pball]

Last edited Mon Aug 31, 2015, 01:11 AM - Edit history (1)

Well, not really...as a lifelong fast-riding enthusiast (I have knee pucks, and they have been safely scuffed), I've been watching this video obsessively since the TT. Today, while engrossed in it, my wife said "Even if you COULD ride like that, you can't buy that bike any more than an F1 car!"

Au contraire, chère épouse...for a measly $21K I can go to my friendly local Yamaha dealer and buy a YZF-R1M. They've taken literally MORE than the tech in these bikes and put it into a streetbike, along with a 200 horsepower engine. In a motorcycle. Along with enough electronics that pretty much the only way you can crash it is to willfully drive it into a tree! It has to be sold with treaded tires for street-legality; if you swap those for racing slicks you could quite seriously ride this hard on your daily commute...what a time to be alive!

[Enthusiast]

1. When I watch these videos of the TT it causes my guts to churn.

Too much speed, too many trees and walls.

[Wounded Bear]

2. Well, I scraped the pegs on my old 80's Silver Wing..

Once or twice anyway.

That video's just insane, though. Pretty sure I never got over 90mph.

[Owl]

3. Is this video sped up?

[sir pball]

4. Not sure if serious...no, it isn't.

These two guys are in the top-level Senior class, which holds the overall course record - 132.7mph average over 37.7 miles of winding mountain roads and village streets. Much of it is well north of 165mph. They're a breed apart.

[Brother Buzz]

5. Then there's Burt Munro - In a world by himself

You live more in five minutes flat-out on a bike like this than most people do in a lifetime - Burt Monro

[Owl]

6. Yes I was serious. I've a motorcycle and can not comprehend those speeds!

[sir pball]

8. I have some abstract intellectual grasp of it

Having spent quite a few summer days on the track - but while that gets me the basics of what's going on it's absolutely incomprehensible to do it at those speeds, on public road surfaces with at best some haybales and mattresses for "runoff" and especially flashing through the shadows like that. Gorgeous insanity.

[Glassunion]

7. For years, John McGuinness has been my hero on the

Tourist Trophy circuits. You could place a penny anywhere on the track, and he'd exactly ride over it each lap. He is more machine than man.

My cruiser has a lean angle of about 29 degrees, I've scraped pegs in the corners several times (I've had to replace a few). These guys lean over in upwards of 60 degrees. That's insane.

I watched a docu series on the TT circuits and they once had to raise the suspension on a bike for John because he kept scraping the engine in the corners. That's just insane.

[sir pball]

9. He's perfect. Then again, he kinda has to be..

..in TT racing if you aren't, you're just dead.

[Glassunion]

11. I love his nonchalant attitude.

He reminds me of Joey Dunlop... Plow through 1/2 a pack of smokes, hop on the bike and win... Several classes...

In the mini documentary (cannot remember the name of it), John's teammates were discussing their fitness routines and how they stayed in shape. Their diet, workout routines, etc... I can only imagine the core strength that one needs to bounce around on top of a gas tank going 200 miles an hour down a bumpy road... Anyhoo, there was a cut to John hanging out with the food vendors, stuffing his face full of sausage just a couple of hours before the race.

John has a nice twitter page... @jm130tt

[sir pball]

12. Guy Martin's the same way..

He was called a "shitpiss straight-talking truck mechanic" in the intro text to this narrated fast lap of his, where he's casually saying "you're comin' down here at what, a hunnred eighty, hunnred ninety...sure, you could do it flat out but then you'll lose more later on." IN TOWN.

Screw it, I can't get the link to link right, cheers!

[Ahpook]

10. I love things that go fast :)

200 MPH is insane

[sir pball]

13. The world's fastest Death Cult..

At a certain point, you stop being shocked by how many people have died here. The shock is how many are still alive.
---
Everyone outside the TT races talks about the deaths. It’s hard not to. More than 200 people have died on the Snaefell Mountain Course...given the loss of life that happens each year, it’s only natural wonder why the race is still allowed. The locals wonder this too. There are fears that the race could get shut down any year. It’s one thing for the riders to die, but if a spectator was killed, or if there was a particularly horrible series of wrecks, the TT could be resigned to history. And it’s not like the motorcycles running in the race are getting slower each year — quite the opposite. One has to imagine if the day will come soon when the bikes will be too much for these old roads.
---
But the riders said they weren’t going because they thought they might die. They said they went specifically because they believed that they would survive and finish and succeed.

Jalopnik.com

[hunter]

14. Modern? How do you mean? My brothers had one of these, among others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CBX

I once rode that bike across the desert under a full moon with the lights off at very high speeds, courting a Darwin Award.

It had plenty enough horsepower to do incredibly stupid things, and we did most without killing ourselves, the luck of fools at times, although my middle brother, the most enthusiastic motorcyclist and motorcycle mechanic, moves like an old man now, all the damage he's done to himself.

Curiously, flying in an ordinary commercial airliner terrifies me, and I've got no fondness for automobiles.

[Rob H.]

15. Google "Kawasaki H2R"

Limited production--therefore expensive as hell--but 300 horsepower. Crazy! The street-legal variant, the H2, has 200 HP for 25 grand but was a limited-production bike, too.

I wouldn't care to get my hands on either of 'em, though, even if I were skilled enough to handle all that power--they're both super ugly, imo.

[sir pball]

16. They're both pigs

The R less so; the streetable H2 weighs 525 pounds! And is only 200hp! For about half the price, the YZF-R1 is 100 pounds lighter and has 201hp. The H2R does take off like a bullet but when the time comes to sling it aroubd, the conventional literbikes will literally ride circles around it.