Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

~ ~Oo( 0 X0 Ji}',( 0 )0:IJl1: Cal has to offer. As it turned out, one of the roads that we decided to ride (normally a blast), has apparently been opened up to every gravel truck in North America. This, of course, put a premium on a bike's ability to accelerate and pass the twin-trailer trucks before the meteor shower of pebbles did too much damage to our new helmets and borrowed bikes. The next stretch of road, picked by our fearless leader (AKA Carruthers), was the true test of any bikes ability to cope with bumps, potholes, offcamber corners, and sand in the road. If the manufacturers sent their test riders to our new secret test road, every consumer would benefit from the huge leaps in suspension technology that would be made in the aftermath (thanks boss). Look what we do for you the reader! Finally, at the end of our streetride day we hit one of the truly amaz- 2001 Cycle News BOOee Sportbike Shootout ing Southern California roads. A perfect 26 miles of smooth rhythmic, twisting asphalt on a b.eautifully sunny day. A perfect combination of fast banked sweepers, and tight offcamber second-gear nail biters. The wide variety of roads that we chose were more than capable of teUing us what we needed to know about each individual bike. Sometimes the worst roads give the rider the best information when evaluating a bike. The truly good bikes rise to the top and show their ability to cope with adversity. Some bikes' traits, such as throttle response, are more obvious to the rider on the street than they would ever be on the racetrack at 10/1 Oths riding. The racetrack that we chose is unique because it simulates the street in a funny sort of way. Maybe that's where the "Streets" in the Streets of Willow Springs came from - the little It may not sound like a big deal to get the suspension set up on a bike, but getting it set up on six different bikes with seven different riders is. We enlisted Kaipo Chung from Race Tech to help us with this chore. If there was anyone person responsible for makjng our day at Willow Springs go smoothly, it was Kaipo. He somehow fettled with the suspension on all of the bikes, and found settings that our wide spectrum of riders could live with. We had riders of different weights and skjlls all riding the same bikes, so getting it right was important. Kaipo worked with the basics, like setting up the sag, then took the bad information we gave him, interpreted it, and turned it into useful settings. That takes skjlls that none of us possess. Race Tech is a full-service suspension business - they not only have their own line of suspension parts, but they also rebuild, revalve, and sevice forks aDd shocks for off-road, motocross, street, and road race bikes. For more information on Race Tech, go to their website www.racetech.com. There you can find setup information, spring rates, products, and a list of dealers and service centers. Or call Race Tech at 909·279·6655. 20 JANUARY 24,2001 • "" U "" I • n e vv s brother of the "Fastest Road in the West". It's a better track to test things such as brakes and suspension than the faster big track, which puts more emphasis on all-out top speed and the bravery of the rider than the competence of the bike. There are plenty of hard-braking areas at "The Streets" - some of them are as bumpy as Ruffles potato chips. There are off-camber corners that are scary-fast, banked corners that ask for more and more throttle, and a first-gear hairpin, tight enough to annoy anyone. The track also has two straights just long enough to get a feel for a bike's top-end engine performance, and also has plenty of places to evaluate a bike's acceleration out of tight corners. When you read our evaluations of these bikes, please remember that there aren't any bad bikes in this group. The class is so competitive that nit-picking is the only way that we can separate the men from the boys. Every bike in this test has its strengths and weaknesses. We attempted to find the most balanced 60a on the market, and we are confident that is what we ended up with. @G!J[JDD@[j)f)0 @~@ll ~7]&J[l {fJ&J@@ Yf][l@0 Dunlop was kind enough to help us out with tires at the last possible moment for our day at the Streets of Willow Springs. They provided us with standard compound D207 Stars, which are also available in a super-soft compound. Dunlop has actually stopped producing the D207 Star (not the street D207) and replaced it with the D208 GP. We put them in a bind with our last·minute request, so we will have to try out the new tires at a latter date. Dunlop's race tires have won more races in Supersport competition than all of the other brands combined - so they were more than adequate for our purposes. The one thing that we regret not doing, is setting the bikes up for the tires. The "Stars" have a larger circumference than the numbers on the sidewalls read, and our stock tires were all over the map, with many different brands represented. Some of the bikes didn't mind the race· compound Dunlops at all, but some of them needed to be changed to put the geometry back where it was supposed to be. Of course we didn't have time to fool with this, so we just tuned each bike's suspension until it felt as close to stock as possible. This made some of the bikes' front ends feel different, with the Yamaha affected by it the most. The combination of the short wheelbase and the 14mm taller tire made the R6 tank-slap like an angry bull. But by the end of the day we had the R6 workjng just fine. Here's a little tip for the novice racer, measure your stock tire's circumference, and then adjust your bike's geometry accordingiy, or better yet take it to G.M.D. Computrack and let them set it up perfectly for you. The "Stars" performed flawlessly all day, even in the morning while the track was still wet from an ovemight rainstorm. After the track dried out we were able to push as hard as we wanted, without any fanfare. Great tires, thanks Dunlop.

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