Bike looks pretty good man but ditch that helmet and buy a motocross one.
I know all the crap like aww but they are shit when youre going fast cause they catch the wind and rar rar rar but the motocross ones just suit supermoto so much more.
I normally wear a moto helmet, but on fastish tracks they're too damn noisy and I find the wind distracting when it buffets you around. But above all, I consider the shoei to be safer than my moto helmet, so I'd rather be wearing it in a high speed get off. That aside, i prefer moto helmets for sure.
Never worn a roadbike helmet so can't comment on noise. But I know my new helmet the bike sounds a hell of a lot louder than it did before.
If you are going fast on road depending on the speed and the openess of the road or track dirtbike helmets are bad. Mine in the bush or on moto tracks I've never had a problem but on the road mainly on the freeway at 100km/h if I lift my head too much or turn to check if cars are coming (I don't use mirror's) My neck just about get's snapped.
No mate, that was my first road race, and I got my ass kicked. As they say, in racing you either win, or you suck. No excuses though, it was a lot of fun.
It was a combined category, so all types of bikes. I finished the motard conversion the week before the event, so it was a challenge to learn a new bike, track and racing awareness all at once. Top speed there for me & my bike was around 140-145kph. The best motards can pull up to around 160kph, but theyre packing 50% more power, and have better riders who carry more speed onto the straight than I could.
So have you gone with a full setup? Are those wheels heavy? Are you using the standard caliper with new bracket or did you upgrade the standard caliper? How wide rear 4.25" or 5"? If you didn't upgrade the caliper do you get brake fade?
I didn't use the drz-sm gear, mainly because there was little available 2nd hand at the time I was building it. I used a mail order info kit to adapt mc22 (cbr250-rr) wheels. They're only 4" & 3" wide I'm fairly certain, so I am running 140/70/17 rear and 110/70/17 front, which is narrower than the 150/60 and 120 combo that dedicated motards run using 4.25 or 4.5 / 3.5 inch rims. I used dunlop alpha-10s, which appear to be the same as the old gpr70's which I was familiar with a long time ago. Most people had slicks and tyre warmers though.
The kit was around $90 from memory, and came with an adaptor to space the front brake caliper out to suit a larger disc. It also came with an adaptor ring to mount a gsxr-600/750 (08/09) front disc to the cbr hub. The kit also had dimensions for new wheel spacers which I had a guy at my work machine up. It all went together fairly well, and had no problems. I was a bit worried on the shakedown ride to work a few days before the race, but it was all fine. The brake calipers are standard. The rear disc is an ebay cbr item which is a bit thinner than an OEM honda one, which worked out better as it gave a little more clearance between the caliper. I only got it because the 2 x honda discs I had were bent to hell, no idea why as the wheels are dead straight.
I don't think the wheels are particularly heavy at all, that said, I didn't have a spoked motard set handy to compare them to.
Front brake was fine, but the track was Morgan Park, it's not notoriously hard on brakes as far as I know. Lever travel was getting a bit deeper toward the end of one of my quicker sessions, but this happens to road bike guys as well. Considering I was using standard dirt pads that were probably frying the performance was pretty good I thought. Races were only 6 laps though, not 45min motogp stuff.
Biggest problem I had over the weekend was shifting the weight bias forward to get more front grip/feel. My bike has stock springs and I'm 90kg, rear sag was way too much for circuit riding. Each session we dialed in rear preload, front compression and rebound, and raised the forks. The bike kept feeling better and better, and by the end of sunday the rear tyre wear was looking well used (as opposed to being overly shredded). But I still had a 1-2mm chicked strip on the edge of my front tyre, but the rear was well used right the edge. I'm no guru but that suggests to me I wasn't loading the front tyre enough on corner entry. That said I wasn't out to overstep my limit and crash, so I was content with making small progress each session.
Look forward to trying a smaller kart track event.
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