Busa went down

L4G4RT0

L4G4RT0

Registered
Hi guys...

Yesterday i had a stupid accidend with my Busa. I was following a car, that was helping me to find a road to a beach. The women was driving slowly and i was behind her car in a safe distance, then she pointed me the direction, I brake as usual with the front brakes and in half a second my Busa went down. I had no time to do nothing...

Well, I only and some small scratches near the elbow and the Busa only had small damage to it (nothing that I have to worry about).

I'm looking now at my bike and trying to find out what happened: maybe the front tire isn't in a good shape, because the road had no signals of oil... Maybe it has wrong pressure... maybe the brakes have some problem, since i didn't brake hard (at least i think i haven't), but I HAVE to find out what happened because I don't feel safe riding my bike now...

One other thing that happened me twice yesterday, was the rear wheel sliding a lot (i almost felt down twice before i actually had the accident).

I'm suspecting that I have more tire pressure than I should, and I'm also suspecting the guys that put my tire, that they sold me a wrong tire: I thought I had a Pilot Sport and what I have is a Pilot Road. Is this a tire that a Busa can wear?!

Today I'm going to check out tire pressure and maybe I'll buy a new front tire, but I'm still very precautious about that Pilot Road on the rear...

Can you tell me something about this?

Regds
 
I can try.
If you had more than 42 psi in the front tire, it was to much, but that is NOT going to cause what you described.
What may, however, is sand on the road. Even at low speed, it can be like ice.
Other than that, as much as I hate to say it, rider error ?

Josh.
 
I'm from Australia, a big-ass island, and therefor lots of coastline, ie BEACHES.
Sand under the front tire can be diabolical. However, it's great for practicing your rolling burnouts !
josh.



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I would have bet too little tire pressure , I've heard of that happening when tire pressure is low but not too high
rock.gif
Keep us informed
 
Sand, if your by the beach the wind can blow it on the road and off in no time. Were you around the beach when you were locking up the rear also? Like the others, sand is the first thing to come to mind.
 
I am 10th the sand opinion here... I hit a patch of light sand once in a parking lot as I was starting to accelerate through a turn... the back wheel slid out from under me in the blink of an eye and I was only going 15MPH. I was fortunate to roll off the throttle just in time before my baby hit the ground... Took every ounce of strength I had to keep her up though...

I went back after the incident to look at the spot she slipped at and the sand was so light that you could barely see it on the road looking close... (I obviously didn't see it while I was riding...)

If I was going any faster or accelerating any harder, that would have been it, I am sure of it...

By your description using the front brake (ONLY?) I am thinking it may have locked on you before it went down. The bike has a tendency to want to pull you straight down in the front locks...

Cloud



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Went to the garage and had a tire pressure measurement
(hope i measuring device is working fine, but i might go to a gas station to measure it again)
- front tire:36.26 psi
- rear tire:29.0psi (VERY LOW!)

Let's say that half a mile before i was riding on sand road, then i went back to asphalt (tarmac), and I didn't notice any sand on road... maybe it was almost invisible... Near the road there was a pine forest with sand on the ground... maybe the wind could make a very thin layer of dust, almost invisible...

Yes, my front tire isn't in good shape... I guess mixing a tire in bad shape, with low pressure, on a dusty road was my problem... That might explain why the front wheel blocked. I'm telling you, it was not a hard break, I've driven hundreds and hundreds of miles on my Busa and even it was too fast, I am almost sure I didn't break hard enough to make the front wheel block on normal conditions...

So I guess (again) this might be a lesson to learn: a tire with enough grip, is never enough if you don't drive on normal roads...
umnik.gif


So here again i post some questions:
- low psi on rear tire is a reason for rear tire slide? it happened to me twice that day on low speed curves - i was driving with my wife (i'm more than angry with the guys that put the tire on the Busa, I told them it should be 2.9 bar!! told'em twice!)
- low psi on front tire is a reason for low speed front tire slide? weird... the feeling i had was that i brake slowly but the front wheel blocked immediatly... so it looks like i didn't had any grip at all (like when you brake on ice, even slowly).
- is the MICHELIN PILOT ROAD a suitable tire for the Hayabusa? Anyone has ever used one? I think it might be too hard for that, and unprepared for our bike's top speed. (next year when I go to Jerez de La Frontera (Spain) I will kill those ##$$## bastards)
 
Lower tire pressure actually gives you more grip for the rear tire in low speed driving(NOT A FLAT TIRE, just lower pressure than normal).
You said you were riding on a sand road then went on asphalt. Maybe your tires weren't clean, still had sand on'em. Are they new? New tires are slick for the first 50miles.
 
Exactly what i thought...
Before i fall down, some minutes before my rear tire lost it's grip on a low speed curve. It's weird, and I thought I had more pressure than normal, but today I didn't got that measurement. Tomorrow I'll measure it again, on a gas station nearby, but well, I'm astonished by both situations...

- 1st a grip loss with rear tire with low pressure
- 2nd a grip loss with front tire with low pressure

Both tires aren't new. Front tire is almost gone, rear tire has more than 500miles on it.
 
If your front tire is almost gone, this could definetly cause a traction problem. I have noticed many times that when the front is completely worn, the bike seems to not stick to the road as much...

Yup, just what I was thinking... front locked-up on you and pulled you straight down... I have done this once as well, but I was going slow enough that I was able to strong arm my zx7 back-up from falling.

Lack of traction on the road combined with squeezing the grip to quickly for the conditions is probably what locked up the front beleive it or not... See ridercoach's last braking thread.
 
I read the Ridercoach's braking lesson... nothing really new to me. I have the conscience now that my mistake was not to have full conscience of the road conditions. I only braked with front wheel, but i was really driving slowly, as you will see on the bike photos I took. So I guess this was really an urfortunate combination of factors:
- dirty road (with dust - not visible)
- worn front tire
- applied front brakes when usually at that speed i use rear wheel braking...

But... nobody told me anything about the rear wheel slides with low pressure and nothing about the dang tire... Michelin Pilot Road
rock.gif
 
the pilot road should be fine and the pressure shouldnt cause it to slide
how new is the rear tire?'
the first 100 of so mile the tire might be slippery
 
If the front tire is old get rid of it as soon as possible.

I've found that tires can just go bad even if they have some decent tread left.

I need to get my CX500T in for tires soon. Last year I went on a long trip with temps around 95º...at times I ran 120 mph for 10 miles straight.
Great trip with no incidents.

The following week I went on a Honda sponsored fun run. The temperatures dropped into the upper 50's. While at a 4-way stop I made a slow left turn and the bike slid nearly 12" for no reason. No oil, sand or gravel.

Since then it's happened two more times, the last being a few weeks ago when I hit a corner fairly fast. Both front and rear of bike slid nearly 3' leaving me with my heart in my throat.

Tires look good but the best I can figure is that hot, high speed trip cooked the compound in the tires.
It's almost like riding on plastic Big Wheel tires.

BTW, NEVER go by a gas station air pressure gauge. They usually aren't even close to being correct.
Buy yourself a good digital gauge and keep it in your storage compartment. I just picked up a nice one with backlit display for only $6.00.

Also keep in mind that the tire pressures need to be checked while COLD. By the time you ride to a gas station or mechanic the tires are warmed up...if you bring the pressure up to 42psi, they'll be way less than that once cooled off.
 
Sorry to hear about your wreck but it could have been a lot worse. Glad your OK.
 
Thank you for your advices guys. I really posted this because I wanted to understand what happened. It's not easy to forget an accident which happened at 20 mph. I guess that the only way it couldn't happen was if I used the rear brake too, but I was driving slowly so I never thought I could need it.

About the tire pressure, I also have a gauge (not digital), but a good one, approved by Michelin. The gas station I told you about is safe because I already tested both measurements there and they match.

I'm posting some photos of the result of my unfortunate moment.

Here it goes...
 
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