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Originally Posted by sharky nrk
Link the youtube vid up and I am sure your get some ninjette subscribers. Thoughts on the setup? Especially interested in comparisons to the 6R (what kinda suspension setup are you running on it?)
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I'm currently trying to teach myself some final cut pro so that the video looks okay prior to posting it. In comparison to the 636, the 300 is obviously much smaller and lighter weight. The chassis has tons of flex which leave a boating effect if that makes any sense. Feels like I'm out at sea but you have to expect that from a bike that was not made with racing in mind.
I've got an andreani cartridge kit up front which is fully adjustable and an Ohlins rear shock with ext. reservoir. The tires I had mounted up are a pair of Dunlop Alpha 13s. The initial feel of the Dunlop Alpha 13s paired with the Front suspension left me with lots of chatter up front while taking turns. Extremely bad chatter actually. To the point where I did one lap and came straight back to our suspension guy Steve who's awesome btw. He retuned the suspension both f/r and left me feeling much more comfortable on the track.
Throughout the 3 days at Jennings, I would go back and forth and mainly retune the compression on the front end which has almost eliminated the front end chatter. At this point there is very little to almost none and I mainly feel it when I'm on the absolute edges of the front tire. I feel it's more the front tire telling me not to push its limit rather than chatter. Also, Throughout I had almost lost the front about 5 times this past weekend and by the end of day 3 I had the suspension to a point where the tire would grip at the very edges and left me feeling very comfortable.
Now that I've covered the good, let me tell you a bit about the bad.
I had come across a very serious issue which I had read about prior to picking this bike up and that is false neutrals/mis-shifts.
Come out of turn 12 pin, down to brake marker 1, 2, downshift....uh oh wtf rear locks out, I get shot off course and now I'm catching air as I'm riding off course and at the same time trying to locate the rear brake with my right foot. The bike is bouncing around everywhere and I'm doing my best to keep it up and have it stop as soon as I can. I just remember reminding myself not to freak out and finally as I felt my foot on the rear brake, all it took were a few gentle tap...tap....tap...taps and it finally stopped right before oncoming traffic on the other side of the track.
This was a very scary issue because I was not expecting this to happen at all and when your carrying that much speed and about to take the last turn you need to think fast and react properly. I think I may look into undercutting my gears because it is not worth the risk of having this happen again. Aside from this and the ****** front brakes which I never used after the first few laps, the bike is an absolute blast. This was my first time riding it on the track and I'll put it to you this way, the poor 636 sat all week and was only taken out for a spin 2 session only. The 3 day weekend was almost entirely dedicated to testing and tuning the 300 and I don't think I'm done yet.
I would like to make a few more modifications and would love to try a set of Pirellis on here instead. SC1 front, Rosso rear. My riding style just fits much better with pirellis than with dunlops. I tend to take extreme lean angles often and that did not feel safe on the Dunlop Alpha 13s. Maybe this is an eye opener and a way of telling me to work on my body position some more instead of relying on the edges of a tire. I also need to remove the clutter on the clip ons, change the grips and make adjustments to the angle of the clip ons.
If you guys have any specific questions feel free to shoot them my way and I'll try my best to answer them