2008 fatal head-on crash on the Dragon US129 in Tennessee USA. It is almost common to find cars, trucks, bikes and cop cars in your lane every day on the Dragon, both on "straights" and in blind cu...
2008 fatal head-on crash on the Dragon US129 in Tennessee USA. It is almost common to find cars, trucks, bikes and cop cars in your lane every day on the Dragon, both on "straights" and in blind curves, so beware target fixation, inability to countersteer (steering like a car or trike, or locking arms), and fear of lean angle by inability to drag a knee or scrape floorboards at any speed. "Failure to maintain lane" is a popular traffic ticket for crashes on the Dragon, with 636 curves and 36 cops per every 22-mile lap. Every ride on the Dragon is like a racing school requiring maximum concentration, no matter how slow you go, even when there's no other traffic.
How to drag a knee on the Dragon at 21 mph. Proof that dragging a knee is neither "speeding" nor "reckless driving", and a required skill on any motorcycle to be able to know how to steer quickly in an emergency.
Practice correct body position facing into turn, arms loose, leaning forward with chest on fuel tank, hold on with legs, steady throttle. Adjust radius by countersteering in opposite direction of turn, and by adding weight to footpegs in the direction you want to lean/steer. Pick a radius (30 feet in this case), then increase speed in 1 mph increments until knee drags. DIY strap-on knee pucks using sports knee pads with pucks and tyraps. Try to find a flat parking lot without painted lines, best to get permission from the property owner for "beginner safety practice".
Motorcycle suspension alignment using strings, trammell bars and laser beam prove motorcycles may have defective suspension design so beware right hand curves. Setting alignment to zero toe just made it worse. Tire runout versus wheel runout affects alignment so spin wheel and take multiple alignment measurements to get the average. Sag was set front and rear with rider weight, using settings from SportRider magazine. Tire pressure must be lowered below 34 PSI Hot Front and Rear on any curvy road or parking lot to practice.
"One of the problems with the CBR600 is that it isn't straight. Our ZX9R is the same. The front and rear wheels can be out of line by as much as 10mm." -Performance Bikes, The Setup, June 2000
"We typically find wheels are 3-4 mm out of adjustment, with one example of over 20 mm. Anything over 10 mm and the customer tends to come back simply unable to believe that we haven't rebuilt the whole bike, as it's been totally transformed back into the neutral handling bike the manufacturer intended. The system can also detect other issues like frame damage, that might otherwise go undiagnosed." http://www.maxmoto.co.uk/lasertrack.s...
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