Jennings GP track day(s) and...a lowside

Stripping her down so I can figure out what's broken...

I swapped my dates to Feb 8-10. Can't wait seeing as it will be negative 15F on Monday. I hate the damn cold!

Well, looks like insurance is going to cover me. State Farm covers anything as long as it's not a timed event. Gave them all the details, told them where I was and what I was doing and it was a non issue. An added bonus was that I was able to submit my own estimate utilizing the parts list and will be doing the work myself. After I submitted the estimate to State Farm the adjuster met me at my house and we went over the bike in my garage this morning. After we went over everything and came to an agreement on which parts need to be replaced..the total came out to $9,681.61 for parts. They total out at 70% and I came in at 63% including my helmet. That's one pricey slide.

State Farm is awesome like always.

I love State Farm

Glad you're ok...

turnone said:

Every sport bike rider should experience the track. Your life will never be the same afterwards. Universal response after some track time "I should have done this years ago!" .

Chris

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Fortunately I do not have this universal response as I started track riding in my 2nd season of riding and loving every minute of it!

Sorry to hear about the bike, glad you are okay.

How long have you been doing track days? This isn't an attempt to flame. Only asking because your body position is very high and likely the result of your lowside. Only mentioning in an attempt to help prevent future repeats. If you look at the picture with the black bike behind you you can really see the difference in what getting off the bike does for your tire. You can see how much lean you have without getting "off" the bike.

I wouldn't normally jump in and critique but I have to agree with MrKo. This is in the spirit of education and better riding practices.

It's funny how much you feel like you are hanging off a bike and then see yourself in a photo and it looks like you are barely leaning off the thing.

The photos above seem like the hanging off is little exaggerated. Maybe to make a point.

Here's somewhat common thing to those learning to ride the track: They may actually drag hard parts before their knee ever touches the ground. That means they are not hanging off the bike enough. Plain and simple.

I look at OP's original post and photos and I see the knee is as far from the ground as his foot peg. With the bike at that extreme lean angle his knee should easily be on the ground telling him where it is.

If your entire ...-crack is not clear of the seat, you aren't positioned far enough over to do the drag your knee thing. It feels ....... ridiculous the first time you actually get your ... over enough to do this but when you tip in and plant you knee easily on the ground and round the corner smoothly you'll see. Your corner speeds will go up quickly because you aren’t leaning the bike as much.


Now get out there, keep learning, and have fun!

bwaide said:

Well, looks like insurance is going to cover me. State Farm covers anything as long as it's not a timed event. Gave them all the details, told them where I was and what I was doing and it was a non issue. An added bonus was that I was able to submit my own estimate utilizing the parts list and will be doing the work myself. After I submitted the estimate to State Farm the adjuster met me at my house and we went over the bike in my garage this morning. After we went over everything and came to an agreement on which parts need to be replaced..the total came out to $9,681.61 for parts. They total out at 70% and I came in at 63% including my helmet. That's one pricey slide.

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Add in your labor and they will total it then get a new one. Insurance co do not tell you that because it saves them money.

bikenamenumber said:

I wouldn't normally jump in and critique but I have to agree with MrKo. This is in the spirit of education and better riding practices.

It's funny how much you feel like you are hanging off a bike and then see yourself in a photo and it looks like you are barely leaning off the thing.

The photos above seem like the hanging off is little exaggerated. Maybe to make a point.

Here's somewhat common thing to those learning to ride the track: They may actually drag hard parts before their knee ever touches the ground. That means they are not hanging off the bike enough. Plain and simple.

I look at OP's original post and photos and I see the knee is as far from the ground as his foot peg. With the bike at that extreme lean angle his knee should easily be on the ground telling him where it is.

If your entire ...-crack is not clear of the seat, you aren't positioned far enough over to do the drag your knee thing. It feels ....... ridiculous the first time you actually get your ... over enough to do this but when you tip in and plant you knee easily on the ground and round the corner smoothly you'll see. Your corner speeds will go up quickly because you aren't leaning the bike as much.


Now get out there, keep learning, and have fun!

Click to expand...

I think the OP ... is clear of the seat otherwise he probably wouldn't get his knee down. His head position should be just inside his hand which will bring his torso parallel and low to the ground. This will bring more of weight off the bike without extreme lean angles which causes the front end tucks. More weight off the bike equals less lean angle, more contact patch, and faster corner speed.

We called that when we pulled up the photos on the way back from the track. Body position was not consistent throughout the day and there were later sessions that looked like my upper body was velcro-ed to the tank. But on the bright side, I have one more thing to work on. I grew up an hour from Jennings and had no idea it was even there. We'd always take a few trips to the N. Ga mountains and that's where I picked up all of my bad habits. Now I get to spend the time to break all of them.

ScrapperX said:

Add in your labor and they will total it then get a new one. Insurance co do not tell you that because it saves them money.

Click to expand...

The adjuster was hoping the bike would be totaled and wasn't too thrilled about being there. State Farm called the company that does their adjustments and sent him out with less than 24 hours notice. Originally an adjuster was scheduled to come out a day or two later but I was going to be on a plane back to Afghanistan so State Farm did me a favor. The guy that came out didn't do adjusting anymore and pretty much whined the whole time. When we first started he said if it got to 70% he couldn't do anything else and his job was done. The tank was one of the first items and after that $3,100 he started up about totaling, then the prices started coming down and he accepted that he wasn't getting off the hook. It didn't help that he knew squat about bikes and the program they use needs a serious update. I didn't want it totaled it hasn't given me any issues and I'd hate to start fresh with a bike built on a Friday. I would have been able to buy it back but I'm okay with the amount I got for the claim.

Just spent 3 days at Jennings. It was my first time there, learned a lot, enjoyed it a lot.
Saturday had a light rain in the AM. I took my 2009 Aprilia RS125 out in the first session Expert and no one was on track, which let me run that session to learn the layout. Rode it one more session, with a couple other bikes on track. After that, we had lunch, track dried out and sun came out to mid 60's F. Rode the 1199 all afternoon. Ran 1:27's fighting a bad pogo on rear end. Started clicking in more rebound and it helped but didn't solve. At the end of the day I swapped off the Dunlops to Pirelli's. Ran a couple sessions on Sunday morning, then got some assistance from Thermosman (AKA Mike). He pointed that my ... was oversprung and needed .80 instead of .95. He also softened it up as best he could and off I went. Times went down to 1:25's.
Monday, woke up and felt good. Ran 1:23's in my second outing. After that, the rear slick was fading fast regarding edge grip and I had a few big slides (TC2). Parked the bike and started packing up some of my crap.
I rode the RS125 in one expert session on Monday and almost highsided coming out of 10. The rear stepped at least a foot out as I was right on the ... of a few of my buddies on larger bikes. Then I rode it in an Intermediate session so I could go hound all the big bikes and pass them through the tight corners. Loads of fun, until the guy pitting across from me, highsided a CBR600RR about 10 feet in front of me coming out of 10. Luckily his bike went to the left and he went to the right and I split between them with a few feet to spare. Best time on the 125 was 1:35's. Remember this is the street 125 (not a race 125) and with Michelin street tires.

GF went out for one final session and ended up crashing hard in turn 3 and was laid out on the track. Evening spent in the ER with result being broken wrist and concussion with some memory loss. No idea what happened. Left side of her boots, leathers and left side + rear of helmet damaged. Bike was beat up bad on the right side. A lot of grinding on the right handlebar and bar end. Switch gear totally busted on the right clip on. Tank cover, all bodywork on right side, peg, and brake lever.

I'm still trying to puzzle out what happened. Luckily I was almost all packed up so I was able to get her to the ER in South Georgia pretty quickly. Once there, nothing was quick.

She's not a fast rider and this was here first track experience, albeit the third day in a row. The 125 won't exceed 98 mph and she was typically going less than 70.

Highly recommend the track. Free camping and showers. Everything is close, pit bike totally unnecessary. They didn't charge us to use the electrical hookups which are located at each pit stall, no need for long extension cords. Concrete patches to set up on were nice.

On another note, concession stand/food trailer is pretty tasty and reasonably priced. The couple that run it are very friendly.

I drove down in my newly acquired 2002 Sprinter Tall Roof and always got more than 22 mpg's going high 70's.

Chris

Sorry about reviving the old thread, but I finally got the back together and hauled it to Nola!

tell us how it went?