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It all comes down to the age-old saying: “Practice makes you suck less.”

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Because of dramatically reduced rake/trail, the transfer of weight to the front during hard braking has dramatically different effects. On a cruiser, the rear wheel will still have traction during hard braking. On a sportbike, all of the traction will be on the front wheel during hard braking. 100%. This is why almost nobody uses the rear brake at all on the track. The only real use is to regulate rear-wheel spin while “stepping it in,” to stabilize the bike here and there, or to stop a power wheelie coming out of a corner.

I use the rear brake on the street for three thing: low speed maneuvers, holding the bike in place at a light/stop, and gradual braking. On my bikes, as soon as you’re braking hard on the front, the risk of locking the rear is too great to bother using it.

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Are you saying that as you’re letting the clutch out, it’s all smooth until there’s a sudden lurch forward? In that case it means you’re too hard on the throttle when the clutch engages fully and so the engine pushes the bike forward once fully engaged with the transmission.

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What am I looking for on which end?

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Every once in a while I’ll get REALLY riled up over this crap. Yeah Elwood, sometimes unleashing a storm of swearing inside my helmet is enough, but sometimes it’s just SO BAD.

I was at my all-time worst last summer. In the span of about a week, I’d had the same experience three times: some asshole in an adjacent lane starts changing into my lane…or more specifically, into ME. Each time, the same thing happened. No big surprise; I expect that crap from drivers. I laid on the horn, pulsed it, held it, shouted, waved…nothing. As the cars crept into my lane, I’d keep out of their way, hoping that at some point, the dickwads would realize their mistake and get out of my way. No dice.

So at the end of that week, I made the ultimate error: I acted on anger. I was lucky that it had no consequences, but in retrospect it’s done a lot to make me realize how foolishly emotional I’ve let myself become on the road. I was mid-right-turn at an intersection (with traffic signals, I had a green light), but had to wait for some pedestrians crossing the street at the adjacent crosswalk. While I’m waiting, a minivan goes AROUND me, pushes through the pedestrians in the adjacent lane, then, as I then started to go forward with the pedestrians cleared, changed lanes into me. Same thing. Honked. Yelled. Waved. I lost it. He HAD to have seen me to realize he had to go around me. He made an illegal turn. He nearly ran over a few pedestrians. And on top of that, the idiot tries to run me over by suddenly switching back to the lane he was supposed to be in? I was so furious that I punched the back of the van with my titanium-knuckled gauntlet. Nothing. The occupants of the car didn’t notice at all.

I’m incredibly lucky that a) they didn’t notice, b) I didn’t damage the car (hmm…what does that say about my punch, c) the driver wasn’t a trigger-happy crazy with a sawed-off shottie under the dash, d) the ol’ LEO didn’t see it, e) I didn’t sabotage my riding mid-punch, etc. Don’t let this happen to you. Control your anger, and don’t risk your life in a multitude of ways by stupidly letting rage get the best of you.

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At least not with a jet kit. Right. If you want raw horsepower, why the @#$! would you start with a bike that has 26 hp? Incidentally, your Ninja has less weight and has more power than mine (around 33 hp if I remember correctly).

So for those of you who don’t know (and sorry for those that do), when manufacturer’s claim “26 hp,” they’re referring to PEAK horsepower. That means that somewhere in the engine’s powerband it generates that much power at full throttle…if only for an instant. This is why you hear people with traditional I4 sportbikes complaining about “lack of midrange or low-end power” despite the astronomical horsepower figures. That full power is only available in the upper portion of the rev range.

A jet kit may not seem like much, but it actually makes a big difference to the street drive-ability of a Ninja 250 because it adds a lot more power in the midrange. You know how you were so sensitive about riding in the powerband? Well precisely what a Dynojet kit is designed to do is broaden that powerband and make more horsepower available throughout. Instead of being restricted to 6-10K rpm, my Ninja starts pulling just before 5K and keeps pulling hard up until 11-12K.

And for the record, when you have 26 hp, 1 hp IS a big deal, though chances are you’ll get more than that

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1) Worrying about what people are thinking about you on the road is the most dangerous thing you can do. It took me a long time to get over it, but the sudden need to impress, to gain the unspoken respect of, etc. the other riders, pedestrians, or drivers around you will lead you towards bad things: poor judgement and distraction. Focus on you, what you need to do to be safe and have a good time.

2) With respect to braking, at least on my bikes, it’s fairly easy to avoid stoppies by using your bodyweight…or rather NOT using your bodyweight. If you’ve ever watched a “how to stoppie” video, you’ll know that one of the keys is to transfer your bodyweight forward, reducing downward force on the rear wheel and making it easier for the bike to rotate upwards around the front wheel. Don’t want to stoppie? Use your legs to keep your bodyweight off your hands and towards the back of the seat. This is especially hard during heavy braking when you’re being pushed forward. The other thing is to be just a tad more progressive in your squeeze. Just like doing a wheelie requires a quick jerk to get the front wheel off the ground, a stoppie becomes more likely if you squeeze the brake lever fast.

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Man I really gotta step up to the plate and write this up for Ben. This is the same old question we get every day…a great question, perfectly fair, just very common.

Unless you’re VERY heavy, weight is not an issue on just about any motorcycle with a 4-stroke (almost everything on the street) and 250cc or greater displacement. The much bigger issue is your height. I started out on an ’08 250R almost two years ago and have enjoyed it for many miles, though not without issues. I’m 6’4″ and had to get adjustable aftermarket footpegs to lower the pegs about an inch to make riding possible. It continues to be problematic for some things, but for the most part, the bike is perfectly rideable.

Short answer: sit your ass down on one and see if it fits. Have a buddy or salesman hold the bike vertical and get both feet up. Make sure your toes are on the pegs and your knees and heels are pressed in, gripping the bike. Go through all the motions: feign rear braking, shifting up and down (both ways is important).

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Usually a “double-apex” is really just two turns. In racing, you’ll sometimes make a double-apex out of a single turn for the sake of going faster. On the street, as far as I’ve ever encountered, there’s not much use for a forced double-apex. The reason you might make a double-apex out of a turn like turn #2:

is because if you take it as a single-radius, you spend way too much time leaned over, you carry less speed through, and you get onto the straight too late. Motorcycles accelerate REALLY fast, so especially with bigger-displacement sportbikes, it’s a lot more about getting the bike pointed out towards the straight as early as possible and getting on the gas than it is about carrying corner speed (as it would be in the 125cc GP class, for instance).

In short, there’s no reason to do this on the street (that I can see) since making the turn comfortably at any reasonably safe speed is never an issue once you’re confident in your skills. You’re not looking to go that 0.1 seconds faster. That’s not to say it’s bad, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

============ THE “MORE THAN ANYBODY WANTS TO KNOW LINE” ======

Put more articulately, when you’re racing, you’re looking to get the bike straight up and down and headed out of the corner as quickly as you can. The reason for wanting the bike upright is twofold. First, if you’re leaned, you decrease the size of your tires’ contact patches, and you’re “wasting” some of your tires’ traction on turning. If you stand the bike up, the contact patch increases dramatically and you can spend 100% of that increased traction on accelerating. The second reason is that, as you lean, the radius of the tire gets smaller, meaning that for a given number of RPM, the bike goes slower than it would straight up and down.

So, what you WANT to do, especially considering that there’s a decent patch of “straight” after turn #2, is to get a really late apex at the very end of the turn, i.e. AFTER that little dirt trail meets up with the road. You want to be wide to the right on the approach to make the straightest line out of the corner, turn in fast, and quickly stand it back up by the apex and pin the throttle. But to be wide on the right with a single apex, you’d have to have trailed the outside of the corner the entire time. You can’t tell from this aerial shot, but that’s a LONG turn, and the road is very wide. To do that would a) be slow, and b) be a greater distance by far. So the solution? Throw in a first apex somewhere above the #2 in that pic. Turns out that’s the fastest way through the turn.

And that is more than you ever wanted to know about turn #2 at Pacific Raceways.

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You’re now officially a two-wheel hooligan! Welcome to the club

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Look into a jet kit. Jet kit will add a few peak horsepower, but most importantly, will add a decent amount of power in the street riding RPM range.

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Thif ith me wif my foop in my mouf.

Great. I’m an idiot. Thanks for keeping me honest! I’ll swap these out when I get home from work (or, more accurately, when I remember).

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I wanted that track bike for sooooo long, and nearly bought one I don’t know how many times. Even when I did, one could argue it was too soon. Point is, you’re making the right choice, and I know exactly how hard it is to make. You just need to hold off that impulse, oh, I don’t know, maybe a couple hundred times , and then eventually you won’t have to anymore.

Hang in there mate. The day WILL come!

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Why on earth would you keep a 250 around when you have a 600 track bike in the garage?

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Sometimes bikes (like the Ninja 250R) are FI in Europe and Asia, but not in the US. I made this guide using the manufacturers US specifications first, and the interwebs to fill in the gaps. Yamaha’s site lists fuel delivery for the WR250F (the X is not in their model line-up as far as I can see) is:

Fuel Delivery: Keihin® FCR 37

That is a model of carburetor. That said, there are probably a ton of little inconsistencies in the spreadsheet given that most of that information is not very readily available. It’s hard to read tone in writing, but I promise you I didn’t mean the above as harsh at all, and very much appreciate people error-checking my work!

I’ll take a look at the TU later, but Suzuki’s site isn’t loading at the moment.

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