[Anonymous]

I come to this restaurant often and last week I told the bartender about my bike. He was like, omg that’s a big ass bike.

Today he tells me that the bike should ride normally at around 7000 rpm. I’m thiinking he’s either totally nuts or is yanking my chain. Why would you be at 7000 rpm unless you’re at about 100 mpg!?

[fotobits]

especially at 7,000 RPM

[TheAbomb12]

lol…

Don’t shift up so early. You probably can’t go 100 mph in first gear.

[Phil]

lol ….mpg or mph ?

[Zantosh]

And what I meant to say was, at 7000 rpm, you could be at a lower speed, but in normal riding, would you be at that sort of rpm from a full stop to a relatively decent 50 mph?

[Andrew]

My Ninja rides best at around 7K rpm when I’m cruising around town.

[Zantosh]

I guess I’m not there yet … but slowly, I will, after I figure out what that means – at 7k rpm, what sort of power output is my bike at and what does that mean?

[Matt]

Different engines work in different ways. What bike are you riding?

A Ninja 250 cruises at a minimum of 6000rpm, 8000rpm in top gear on the freeway.
In contrast, my dad’s GS450 red lines about there and spends most of its time about 4000rpm.
Cruisers are harder to be specific with since few have tachs, but definitely operate at a lower RPM. The Honda Shadow 600 is happy as close to idle as possible.

I was looking at a ZX-6R the other day that had a colour coded tach. 1-5000rpm was white, 5000 to redline (14000 I think, didn’t pay close attention) was green, and above that was red (obviously), but the meaning was quiet plain. You want to be in the green anytime you are putting load on the engine, which includes cruising at freeway speeds.

—
“The two seconds between ‘Oh S**!’ and the crash isn’t a lot of practice time.”

[Zantosh]

Buell Lightning XB12Scg

[Matt]

I have no experience with the Buell 1200, but as it is based on the sporty’s 1200, I expect it’ll be a fairly low revving engine with lots of grunt. Not the sort of thing you need to worry about under-revving and lugging the engine.

If you are keeping the revs low enough that accelerating feels like it is working the engine until it gains some more revs, you’re probably cruising a little too low, otherwise, you’re doing fine. The lower the revs, the better the gas mileage (within reason, again so long as you aren’t lugging the engine). Your bartender is probably thinking you are on a bike with a Japanese style inline four that requires higher revs. But at the litre size, even those are pretty easy going about being at low revs (compared to the 600cc bikes which demand the higher revs).

—
“The two seconds between ‘Oh S**!’ and the crash isn’t a lot of practice time.”

[Zantosh]

That’s what I feel – that it rides wonderfully. At 3000 rpm, it’s really hauling ass – not lugging at all. In fact, if I let it, at 3000 rpm, it’ll go 70 without any effort and then I’d have to shift. I’ve found that based on the engine sounds, this engine moves wonderfully without revving very high and I’m sure I’d be able to kill myself without much effort were I a total child!

Fortunately, I’m not trying to do anything fancy, just learn to ride, enjoy the sunshine, and go around the neighborhood.

Next lessons to learn – what to do when I have to stop quickly.

[Author]

Posts