Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffM
It will be interesting to see how fast we go during Craig's Wendover to Ely competition. My stock bike (Ninja 250) will keep up on the highway at 75 all day long. With aero mods it will be interesting to see how it performs.
Jeff
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I bet you'll have no trouble keeping up with the pack. Maybe you won't have to run WOT with the mods you've made.
In the AMA Days event, I'm not so worried about getting passed by an old Helix, but I would like to run a steady pace, which may or may not work if people are towards the back varying their speeds to try and pass.
This being my first-time ride at a Vetter event, I'm sure I'm going to learn alot about what "not" to do that I can't even fathom at this point. Right now, with what I've learned on here, I've sort of got a strategy in mind. I'm thinking if I can run towards the front; maybe just behind Fred and his partner; which I can easily do with the capability of my bike, I may not have to keep watching folks coming up on me. I'm not that accustomed to running tight in a group-ride pack. I'm a daily commuter in a rural area, and normally when I'm commuting, I stay way back when I come up on someone, so this will be a new experience for me. However, lately I've gone on a couple of rides with a guy with on a Hyabusa. I've practiced some staying in tight behind him through turns and all. The bike I've got should be able to perform well and still get great mpg up to about 65 mph. Not sure what happens beyond that. Probably not too good.
During my rides with my riding partner, I've been able to keep the bike in 5th and 6th gear most of the time through the twisties behind him, but some of the tighter curves I had to downshift to 4th, and yet I've been able to keep the RPM between 2800-4000. The CTX700 has still beeen able to return near 80 mpg with this fairly-aggressive riding being a large portion of the miles. My partner says he can't shift up above 4th in the twisties, because he loses all his torque and his engine bogs. I told him that my bike was just the opposite. If I go into a curve, and I've chosen to low of a gear, I find myself having to shift up very quickly in order to have the grunt I need to drive hard out of the curve. My bike performs somewhat like my diesel car, where I need to be careful not to downshift too much; just not the same extreme as my diesel where torque is peaked between 1800-2400.
My partner said that he will average 30-32 mpg on that kind of riding, but that 70+ mph on the interstates, he can get around 37. I told him that I would say it would probably be the opposite for me. I can still do very well mpg wise even with alot of heavy throttling (or at least that's what I'm learning from these kind of rides), as long as I can keep the RPM relatively low. Even though I've never ridden on the interstate @ 70+, I'd guess that my mpg would drop substantially even though it would be far less pulling back on the throttle than these twisty rides.
I'm not a physics-minded person, so I don't know if there is really anything to this theory in my mind, or if my theory is already proven or disproven, but I feel like that low-end, torque-peak machines have an advantage in a fuel economy contest compared to not-so-torquey machines with similar levels of horsepower, and that's part of the reason why Fred does so well. He can keep his bike in the meat of his torque range, and at the same time, be running around 3,000 RPM. Up hills and all. That's sort of how my bike is tuned, except that I've got the disadvantage of multiple cylinders, and what puts me at an even bigger disadvantage, mine is spark ignition. There is a whole laundry list of factors that make diesels more efficient, from the fuel, to the combustion, to the lack of a fuel-air mix requirement. But, at least with respect to the torque curve, I've got only a slight disadvantage as compared to Fred, because my torque also comes on at about 3K just like him and his bikes.
Reading on craigvetter.com, there is lots of discussion about concepts that seems to minimize the importance of engine design or type, but instead all the focus for maximizing fuel economy on two and three wheels deals with limiting horsepower, engine displacement, and lowering drag. I don't even read alot about transmissions and drive trains, but those have to be huge factors. There is some discussion about cylinder size, number, and arrangement, but other than that, I've not found anything dealing with the torque curve, and how a 650+ displacement engine can out do 250's (even if it is a diesel), which I thin think is a big oversight when looking at fuel economy, and I think Fred is proving that on every ride. But I don't really know anything; just rambling and rooting for diesel power!