Rocket nearly killed me

[TURBO200R4]

I actuall just went down on April 26th on the way up to RAAX. Like you don't remember what happened only one night in the hospital for me. Mine is an 09 Touring DS but all the bars took the damage and no broken bones, helmet and riding jacket took a skinning but that why i wear them. So glad to read your doing ok. Ride when you can but always be SAFE.

Johnny B09T

glad it turned out ok for you

The problem is that just knowing in your head what to do will not translate to proper action when your wheel starts sliding. The only thing that works is to actually practice correcting slides, which means you have to create slides, which is ****ed dangerous. It's a dilemma. Plus, creating a slide and controlling it is still hugely easier than having a slide surprise you and then doing the right thing. Best thing to do is just avoid the situation altogether by not riding in ways that generate slide.

i figure at my age if the back or the front starts to slide to much i will just bend over as far as i can and kiss my ass goodbye.

 

[Lostride]

glad it turned out ok for you



i figure at my age if the back or the front starts to slide to much i will just bend over as far as i can and kiss my ass goodbye.

A 100% guarantee that you never slide the bike is to never get into the situation in the first place. I know it sounds pretty obvious, but it would pay to practice all you can about motorcycle control, cornering, braking, reading the situation etc than practicing sliding your bike (on the road). Once you have reduced the risk of sliding your bike to (say) 95% (arbitrary number) go out on a dirt bike in some mud and do some slow sliding control, nobody gets hurt and you get a sort of idea about what it feels like, especially at the point before either front or rear start to let go.

In scuba training you have to sit on the bottom at 8 metres ( 30 odd feet) of water and take your gear off including mask, get it all back on properly and clear the mask, all the while remaining calm and breathing normally (reg stays in). This is a nerve wracking experience but it is an important controlled exercise in what a problem feels like. The take away for me was stay calm and be methodical (basically that is the best you can do under the circumstances anyway). There is a video on youtube talking about high-siding a bike and the expert says something similar about staying calm (as the process begins). Sometimes our instinct is the wrong thing to do and we have to fight that and be methodical, in the scuba example the instinct as panic starts to rise is to go to the surface asap, and in the high-side example it might be to grab some rear brake etc

just my thoughts on the subject, I am in no way an expert on these matters, just a student.

 

[TURBO200R4]

when i was young and indestructible i could take my 650 bsa with 13 to one pistons and a square cam put it into a slide then bring it back up however i am now breakable and it seems like it would be impossible for me to do that with the rocket. but i must admit the the bsa did stomp me a few times just to show me who was the boss. but thats another story.
i may be will play with it on some dirt roads when i have someone to help me pick it up.
i have leaned on the throttle a bit on the dirt but it always seem to start to the right or the left pretty fast.

 

[cr0ft]

stay calm and be methodical (basically that is the best you can do under the circumstances anyway)

This is of course good advice, but they're called survival reactions for a reason - anyone who gets surprised and/or shocked by the bike suddenly doing things you're not expecting will be doing things before there is really time to start analyzing what's going on, ie reacting. Which is why I said the only way to have the right reactions to control a slide is to create those reactions through endless repetition. Which may not be practical and certainly not entirely safe to acquire on a normal bike. There are sliding rigs designed to keep the bike from tipping over out there for some bikes but you'd probably have to custom make them for the Rocket, and it's all increasingly unlikely to make sense/happen.

One of the problems of humans driving anything is the fact that humans are incredibly slow and inept. Including me, not saying I'm exempt - it takes us literally at least a second, more likely two, to process what is going on and start making intelligent decisions. Two seconds in a situation where the bike's rear suddenly steps out on you is an age. Pre-trained reactions is the only thing that may keep you in the saddle - well that or pure luck. Check out how fast things happen in this video for instance, it's a bunch of high-sides where the rider made it. From start to finish of the incident is easily under a second; the rider didn't have any time to think about what was going on, what the riders did was pure reaction possibly aided by training. Not all highside situations end badly, but there literally isn't time to be either calm or scared - the situation begins and ends before any really reasoned thought of any kind can take place.

 

[Mittzy]

I hate it when the back wheel says to the front wheel "Follow Me"

 

[Lostride]

This is of course good advice, but they're called survival reactions for a reason - anyone who gets surprised and/or shocked by the bike suddenly doing things you're not expecting will be doing things before there is really time to start analyzing what's going on, ie reacting. Which is why I said the only way to have the right reactions to control a slide is to create those reactions through endless repetition. Which may not be practical and certainly not entirely safe to acquire on a normal bike. There are sliding rigs designed to keep the bike from tipping over out there for some bikes but you'd probably have to custom make them for the Rocket, and it's all increasingly unlikely to make sense/happen.

One of the problems of humans driving anything is the fact that humans are incredibly slow and inept. Including me, not saying I'm exempt - it takes us literally at least a second, more likely two, to process what is going on and start making intelligent decisions. Two seconds in a situation where the bike's rear suddenly steps out on you is an age. Pre-trained reactions is the only thing that may keep you in the saddle - well that or pure luck. Check out how fast things happen in this video for instance, it's a bunch of high-sides where the rider made it. From start to finish of the incident is easily under a second; the rider didn't have any time to think about what was going on, what the riders did was pure reaction possibly aided by training. Not all highside situations end badly, but there literally isn't time to be either calm or scared - the situation begins and ends before any really reasoned thought of any kind can take place.

If you ride your Rocket like any of these guys you are asking for a tank slapper! I think we are talking about more general riding, at reasonable speed. But if you are going too fast and the rear starts to slide just add more power, your rocket has plenty :

 

[cr0ft]

If you ride your Rocket like any of these guys you are asking for a tank slapper! I think we are talking about more general riding, at reasonable speed

Oh, agreed. Just saying that most emergency situations happen so fast (even ones less extreme than racing circuit high-sides) you don't really have time to think it through. You barely have the time to react, because we do as humans still have "processing time" as well as time to start "sending out" orders to your hands and feet on what to do about it. The standard time used in accident reconstructions is 1.5 seconds from becoming aware of a problem to starting to deal with the problem.

And in such situations, as I said, 1.5 seconds is an incredibly long time. Making it or not is more a matter of luck than it is skill.

The Rocket drift is really not an emergency at all, the bike is doing exactly what that rider intended to do. Stuff like that is easy, as the rider has already decided what he'll do when the bike starts sliding because of the things he did on purpose to make it do so.

If the rear slides out unexpectedly due to a slippery patch, even a rider of that skill is in dire peril of mishandling it or being too slow to react appropriately and then dumping the bike.

 

[Manic_Mechanic]

Let us know if you find out actually what went wrong and caused the lock-up .. good to hear you are 'jumping back on'

It was the same issue that Rocket Scientist had. A 50 cent circlip jumped out of the groove on the output shaft of the trans allowing the gear to float into it's mate. Two gear sets engaged at once.

 

[mr hunt]

Welcome to the club....

 

[Manic_Mechanic]

Welcome to the club....

I'd REALLY like to get a head count of how many owners experienced this.