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Honda Grom: Beginner Bike Profile + Owner Reviews
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eternal05Participant
Great advice. The same is also VERY true of the foot controls!
eternal05ParticipantAs other people have mentioned, your posture can have a huge impact on your comfort on a bike.
On a sportbike (and really, the Ninja 250 isn’t really a true sportbike in this sense…but that’s a good thing for you right now), because the riding position is aggressive and leaned forward, you need to develop stronger back muscles to lift your upper body up without putting weight on the handlebars. If you just rest the weight of your upper body on your hands, you’ll not only get very uncomfortable with stiff arms and numb hands, but you also won’t be able to accurately control the motorcycle. You can’t really turn the handlebars carefully if you’re also relying on them to stay on the bike.
Again, as others have said, the key is to squeeze the crap out of the bike with your lower body, then support your upper body with your back and other core muscles, all the while keeping your arms flappy and loose, with a light and relaxed grip on the bars. A few specific things helped me a lot when I was just starting:
– Squeeze the tank between your knees. At first, really squeeze to give yourself that sense of security, that you’re not going anywhere. Eventually, you’ll realize that most of the time you’re squeezing, you aren’t at any risk to be thrown, and you’ll learn to relax most of the time.
– Squeeze your heels into the plates in your rearsets. Every sportbike has a plate above and behind each footpeg that is specifically there as a grip point for your heel. Squeezing the lower part of the bike there with your heels will add extra confidence and help you relax your upper body.eternal05ParticipantYou can get stellar pricing, even on new bikes, if your location is victim to an “off season.” Here in Seattle, for instance, prices on everything motorcycle related plummet from October until early Spring.
eternal05ParticipantEverybody at these things thinks they know what to do. Most of them don’t. Take all the advice you get with a whopping pile of salt. If it sounds wrong or dangerous it probably is.
One more thing: DON’T LET ANYBODY MODIFY YOUR BIKE. Do NOT let anybody touch your suspension. If there’re guys providing track-side support (i.e., vendors who come to the track to sell tires/services/etc.), find the one that all the local racers use and let him work on your bike.
eternal05ParticipantMore power to you! I’d love to see you getting into this stuff, though do be careful on the public roads
Here are the most important things for a hobbyist track day rider.
1) Have your bike in order:
– The tech requirements you’ll have to meet differ from track day organization to organization, so you’ll have to double check with your host at the track. On the west coast, you usually only have to tape your lights. Your tech requirements may differ.
– TIRES!!!! Get some decent rubber on your wheels and make sure there’s plenty of tread left!
– Chain tension: make sure it’s within spec. If anything, err on the side of slightly too loose. Few things are more dangerous than an overly tight chain.
– Reasonably recent oil change.
– Check torque on all major bolts, especially those that prevent fluid leaks (e.g., oil plug).2) Have your gear in order:
– Get good gear. Period. You know what that means. After that it’s all a question of how much you want to spend.
3) If you don’t have one, rent a trailer. U-haul is super cheap (~$15/day). Not only do you preclude the possibility of taking supplies with you, you’ll also be in no condition to ride on public roads by the end of the day.
4) Get some solid supplies:
– Extra gas. Get a good 5 gallons of gas to take you with you on top of a full tank in your bike. Don’t bother with race fuel. It’s a waste of your time. Depending on your bike (you have a GS500, right?), you may not even need premium.
– TOOLS! If you have them, bring all the tools you can to fix anything that could go wrong. You wouldn’t believe how often something needs tightening, loosening, removal, installation….and on and on.
– Stuff to drink, and perhaps also to eat. I usually bring a cooler full of water and gatorade and a couple of power bars. The track day orgs around here tend to provide lunch, but if yours don’t, you’ll need lunch too.
– If you have them, bring a canopy (think E-Z Up) and some folding chairs. Sun/rain can get oppressive after a while.5) DO NOT FORGET EARPLUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!! The wind noise at 120+ mph will make you deaf in no time.
Definitely let us know if you have any other questions!
eternal05ParticipantYeah, Eon’s spot on. If you want a sportbike, get a Ninja 250 and get adjustable footpegs for around $120-130. The only issue with size on the Ninja 250 is length from peg to fuel tank. Your knee is supposed to fit under the top of the tank, but with my long legs (I’m 6’4″, thank you very much ) I couldn’t get my knees underneath. Adjustable footpegs fixed that by allowing me to lower the pegs by the inch I needed to get fit my knees in.
Honestly, while I loved the crap out of my 250, you do have lots of other options. Dual sports / motards are great for tall guys because, as Eon said, they tend to have high seats. You still have to go sit on them, as the high seat doesn’t always translate into lots of room for your legs. It all depends on where the pegs are in relation to the seat. All the “big four” Japanese companies have equivalent dual sports ranging from 250 supermoto bikes (tons of fun) all the way up to 650s. Try one out and see what you think.
eternal05ParticipantThere are people who buy into an image too much to indulge any other interest, but despite being “a sportbike guy,” you wouldn’t see me turning down a free cruiser. I just have to choose which bikes to spend my garage space on, and I don’t want a cruiser enough to give up another bike for it.
Bottom line is, get what makes you happy. End of story. Forget being a “cruiser guy” or a “sportbike guy” and just ride what you want.
eternal05ParticipantThanks for getting that sorted out, Ben!
eternal05ParticipantI’ve definitely been using the site a lot less as a result. I don’t really have a reason not to, since I can access it from nearly-virus-immune devices, but I think it just has a psychological effect. Newbies who are showing up for the first time are definitely going to think twice before testing the waters.
eternal05ParticipantJust realized my subject line is probably unclear: I AGREE with Trials Rider and disagree with whatever source told you to hammer downshifts to slow down, especially in the rain. This is BBM, not “expert riders forum,” so don’t take this as an attack, but rather a very worried plea for you to rethink your riding.
So let’s think about this. There are basically three ways to slow your bike down while going straight:
1) Front brake: slows the front wheel only, provides the biggest proportion of available braking power, but can have some catch-22s when you don’t have a lot of grip (rain, gravel, etc.)
2) Rear brake: slows the rear wheel only, provides much less braking power, and is much easier to lock due to having less of the bike’s weight over the rear tire (and therefore a smaller tire contact patch) when you’re braking, but can have a stabilizing effect on low-traction surfaces.
3) Engine braking: This has the same effect as the rear brake because you are applying a slowing force to the rear wheel (through the transmission). However, it is much harder to finesse your rate of slowdown via the engine->transmission than with the rear brake.Keep in mind that both front and rear brakes on just about all modern bikes a) don’t exhibit debilitating brake fade, and b) are more than powerful enough to lock their corresponding wheel just about any time you want. If you have that much braking power on hand, why would you use your transmission to slow down instead, especially when you have more control with your rear brake lever? Doing this in the rain or on loose surfaces is an especially bad idea, as any sudden input can jolt your tire loose and cause a slide.
But when you go so far as to throw yourself down a gear and let out the clutch to slow the bike down, you’re not just using engine braking. You’re suddenly applying a large and hard-to-control amount of engine braking to the rear wheel. This is akin to grabbing a bunch of rear brake and should be avoided. On top of being useless from the point of view of bike control, it also puts a ton of wear on your clutch and strain on your transmission. This is something that you might have had to do with an old car or bike after the brakes faded away to nothing, but like I said, modern bikes have good brakes! Use them!
Like TrialsRider said, when you downshift, blip the throttle so that the engine speed climbs to match the new gear. If you do it well, you should barely notice a downshift, and the bike should stay settled.
eternal05ParticipantIf you weren’t directly responding to me, disregard this altogether. Either way, there is no question in my mind that Peter’s decision to ride was his own, and his parents supported his passion. It’s not something that needs to be regulated by anybody. The only unfortunate aspect is the fact that a young kid cannot fully understand the risks they’re taking. Even I don’t think I do, and I’m more than a decade older than the late Mr. Lenz. It’s not a problem you can fix; it’s just a tough issue, especially when faced with the death of a talented 13-year-old. Parents are often seen as the firewall between a kid and a danger or decision that the kid is not yet ready for. While the rude and thoughtless reactions we’ve seen around the internet are reprehensible, you have to at least understand what might lead a person to react that way.
eternal05ParticipantI just realized that I met this kid at the track day at which I broke my collarbone a month ago (have I mentioned that? if not, ignore me). He’s from Vancouver, WA, and he was riding in the expert group on his little race bike. I didn’t catch his name at the time, but I recognized the face in the news photos immediately.
eternal05ParticipantIn my experience, a sportbike is very hard to lift, also in part because it has a high center of gravity (relative to the bike’s position when upright). That means that the weight is at the end of the lever as you’re lifting, and it’s a bit harder to handle. In fact, the last time I lowsided at the track, I had trouble getting my bike up by myself in the sloped gravel (thankfully a corner worker showed up to help before I embarrassed myself by dropping it again).
eternal05ParticipantYeah, I read about this when it happened…it’s bad enough when you hear about a guy in his mid-twenties losing his life, but at least a person of that age would have a better grasp of the risks taken. It’s a tough question, for sure.
eternal05ParticipantThe whole “what is the right size” debate is really tiresome because everybody is super-biased by their own experience. I know I am. You’ll find excellent, super-skilled riders who say that a 250cc bike is by far the largest you want to start on. You have other excellent, super-skilled riders (at the extreme, mind you), who think that a 1000cc sportbike is an obvious choice for the aspiring beginner (and these people are just clearly wrong). The problem is that the people giving the advice (including us) are the ones that succeeded in making their choices work out, and by virtue of making things work out, they inevitably believe they made the one “right” choice. There may be only a few people per city that began their riding careers on GSX-R1000s and stayed upright long enough to talk about it, but you better believe those few people will make more than enough noise to make up for all the quiet riders that ended up in ditches.
Ultimately, as somebody who’s 6’4″, 185 lbs and who now all-but-races supersports, I think you’d do well to consider a 250. That’s not to say that maybe a 500cc isn’t the right choice for you, but you shouldn’t rule out a 250cc bike either. Your first order of business is to go take your MSF beginning rider’s course (BRC), get the feel for what a 250cc bike feels like (they almost always use 250s), get a sense of what sorts of things you like or dislike in bikes, and THEN start shopping around, sitting on bikes, etc.
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