Whale tail Porsche vs. old GS1000

[Anonymous]

Hi all!
This happened some time ago on a lazy summer day tooling down a favorite and most familiar stretch of freeway.
I had just merged onto I-84 coming out of town heading for home, when a Porsche started crowding my backside....so I nudged the speed up a tad .....still there..a bit more......getting POed now.
OK fine....One downshift and I nailed it...
We want to race huh?..Lets see what you got !!
Well, as I weaved in and out of traffic my competition faded to the back, so I laid back and waited for him. As he approached I took of again bumping it to 118 and came up on a lazy righthander at 90 or so & for the first time encountered the dreaded weave that I'd allways heard of.
Yuch!! 'OK now just back of easy Rick' No more of that for me...
As I pulled of at my exit I got a good look at my "competition" as he pulled up beside me at the light.
"That was great....I've got a bike too & I've allways like 'racing'"
He was in a black whale tail Turbo Carrera.......
That was fine.......I guess this calibre of car is acceptable to run against.
( Note: I don't do such stupid things anymore as it is hazardous to your health AND very illegal...Its' the fastest I've ever been on a bike by the way and the windblast is very difficult to enjoy)
Rick.......

 

[Dink]

You've got an 1150 and you dont do that any more?
then again they arent competive against an 1150 eh?
Dink :wink: :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[crag antler]

whale tail

My significant other,Donna, :lol: has always talked about the whale tail Saab's of the 70's and 80's.
Any Pictures out there :?: :wink:
Thanks

 

[twhite]

Like this....

 

[Anonymous]

Zoom,Zoom....

Zoom,Zoom....

You've got an 1150 and you dont do that any more?
then again they arent competive against an 1150 eh?
Dink :wink: :wink: :lol: :lol: :lol:

No ...nothing much on four wheels is competitive with my 1150 I got now,......a while ago I came upon a slow (50 MPH) line of cars on a highway,...I was at the back and when it was clear I opened the 1150 up......in top gear no less.....I cleared the fifth car in the lead at well over a hundred.......then and there I KNEW there was nothing out there for competition. The porsche driver ( also a bike owner) as he yelled out the window MUST have known it would'nt be much of a race, but was just running hard for the sheer fun of it.
Rick.......

 

[Billy Ricks]

As he approached I took of again bumping it to 118 and came up on a lazy righthander at 90 or so & for the first time encountered the dreaded weave that I'd allways heard of.

That weave or wallowing feeling is usually cured by hanging off a little more. It can be tough making yourself do it when you feel the bike moving on you but unless your suspension is way off it normally does the trick.

 

[Anonymous]

i had only two cars that ever gave me a run on a "liter" bike... i was on my '93 Kaw Concours both times...

dusted the late 90's Indy Pace Car corvette though was strong on the straights up to about 140

close call w/a modified Acura NSX... one FAST and handling car...

note, both were driven by experts and both experiences included about 10 miles of sweepers and highway straights...

a real super car can give a stock gs 1 or 1150 a run... but not for long
hahahaha

speed safely...
turk

 

[Anonymous]

Jesus.....

Jesus.....

You guys are out there doing a buck-eighteen on I-84??? Man, I get up to around a buck and I'm ready to let off the throttle..... 8O 8O 8O

 

[KGB]

I LOVE :!: when some cager wants to "play".
Only by myself, but I do get the urge to let her run........

Last time was a newer style Trans Am. My speedo only runs up to 85, that's when I usually shift to 4/th.....By then I could see the whole car in my mirror. By about 7K on the tach in 5/th....well he wasn't catching up.
I leveled off at about 80, he pulled up nedxt to me gave me a thumbs up.
I gave him one also and just grinned the rest of the way home.
If I'm at a stop light, I might give the _______(fill in the blank) a little head start, shift 2/nd and blow by him, usually catching 3/rd.
I love the touque to horsepower crossover :!: :!:
I don't usually mess with Mercedes, usually an older person and they get freaked when you go by.

 

[mcycle-nut]

The clowns with 5L Mustangs seem to always want to take me on. :roll: They lose. Even with my Magna, the 5L crowd was there. A guy even took me on while I was riding my two-stroke! He got "smoked"! :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

Cool stories, any GS running well will knock the socks off anything on four wheels. But these are antique bikes by todays standards, watch out for the wobble, you may become a statistic :!: -Joe in Boise

 

[Anonymous]

What is this deadly wobble you guys speak of? Is it something common only with GS models or just any older style bike at such high speeds? Still a little new to riding, thanks for understanding

 

[Dink]

What is this deadly wobble you guys speak of? Is it something common only with GS models or just any older style bike at such high speeds? Still a little new to riding, thanks for understanding

"The Wobble" is fairly common to older bikes, not just GS's. BTW it is generally more like a small weaving, older bikes are not as strong in the frames as new bikes,and new bikes dont have twenty years wear on them either.
Dink

 

[Hoomgar]

What is this deadly wobble you guys speak of? Is it something common only with GS models or just any older style bike at such high speeds? Still a little new to riding, thanks for understanding

It's something that I only ever "saw" happen in mid 80's Honda's that I rode with. I have never had it happen to my on my Yama or Suzi.

The worst was a 650 Nighthawk, that thing would wobble so bad around turns at high speed that you thought it was gonna flip over. The Magna's were a close second and coupled with the shakey front dampeners on those things it scared the hoopies out of me riding with them. Those things were way to fast for the wobble they had. 8O

 

[argonsagas]

There are a variety of resons for "speed wobble". The many parts are supposed to work in harmony, but, once they get out of synch, and begin to act separately, they can set up distortion in the others, as each has to follow suit.

At speed, any bike lefts a bit in the air, exposing more fork length as the pressure is unloaded. That gives more length for the forks to flex.

When the specific bike reaches a certain point, on a certain type of road surface, the many bounces and twists in the forks and flex of the frame reach a point where the front wheel is highly confused as it tries to meet all the demands of the mechanics above.

Since the demands are conflicting, the bike begins to wander.

There are two simple things you can do to minimize the risk of this:

Check to be certain all the parts are in good shape, the forks true and balanced, and all bearings properly tightened. After that, add a fork brace.

 

[mdole]

I know that one of the problems on the Honda Magna and Sabre bikes was that the fork brace was prone to cracking and the one on my old Sabre got to the point that it just fell apart when I took it off to change it but unless you looked a t it really close you couldn't see the fine cracks in the metal.

The fork brace cracking lead to a number of instabilities that were made worse by having an anti dive unit on one of the fork legs.

A super brace fixed the problem.

Mike

 

[Anonymous]

Weave & wobble

Weave & wobble

What is this deadly wobble you guys speak of? Is it something common only with GS models or just any older style bike at such high speeds? Still a little new to riding, thanks for understanding

Fission:
Lets try to define weave (Which is what I experienced) and the other one which is wobble.......often times the two are interchanged but they are very different.
Weave is that high speed instability that Argonsass wrote so accurately about.....their are several contributing factors that bring this instability about. The feeling has been correctly described as as if the bike had a hinge midway down the chassis directly beneath your butt & the bike seems to flex at that imaginary point.........very unnerving sensation especially when it crops up at that high speed right when your senses are running in overdrive keeping up with things.
Wobble is a very different beast...do you recall pushing a run down shopping cart thru a grocery store & notice one of the stupid casters on the cart buzzing.....shaking side to side rather violently........WELL...you bikes front wheel has a castering action very similar to that shopping cart. Can you imagine that buzzing action happening to your front wheel???
The handlebars dissappear in a blur usually shaking them out of your hands......You might have seen bike racing video of racers holding on tight when a wobble comes up & it winds up shaking the whole bike rather violently......often times enough to crash em.
Just think for a moment.....what do you think would happen if you were to pull a wheelie at say seventy or so & when you touched down the front tire it wasn't pointed exactly toward the direction of travel......the castering action senses this and tries to wrench it back in the direction it is suppose to be often with a violent but brief oscillation
Rick......

 

[Anonymous]

Got a taste of speed wobble on my 84 shadow 700 at 115mph, ick! got it under control then went to change my BVDs when I hit the rest stop....

 

[Anonymous]

I know that one of the problems on the Honda Magna and Sabre bikes was that the fork brace was prone to cracking and the one on my old Sabre got to the point that it just fell apart when I took it off to change it but unless you looked a t it really close you couldn't see the fine cracks in the metal.

The fork brace cracking lead to a number of instabilities that were made worse by having an anti dive unit on one of the fork legs.

A super brace fixed the problem.

Mike

what year sabre?

 

[lartross]

I've always had a penchant for speed...had my old '71 750 Honda up to 135mph, going home at midnight. It handled it well. I've had my 850 wide open a coupla' times...no idea what speed...it does OK. On a 40mph sweeper at 80, it's a little shakey...had a '79 1100 Yamaha. It was very powerful, but, didn't inspire confidence in sweepers or hard stops. I really miss being able to just twist the throttle in 5th and zoom...there you are-fast! This 850 is kinda like the 750 Hondas I've had...gotta work the gears to get anywhere fast. I had my '78 GS1000 at top end a coupla times. It was stable...no idea how fast...it either had an 80 mph speedo or it was broken...I slept several times since then and don't remember which. Isn't it great being older!? Every day is a new start! I love it. Oh, for those of you that tend to worry about the rest of us...I'll never do it again, I promise...maybe. 8)