Lower powered bikes harder to ride?

[Aikman666]

It kind of dawned on me today, that lower powered bike's are acctually harder to ride! Not so much the actual riding, but the taking off. Probably because its just because you havent got as much power taking off as you would with a bigger bike, so it requires alot more subttle control of the clutch & throttle. On my old 175cc, i could have taken off blindfolded, in the dark, in the rain extremely easily. But this new 50 ive got seems to be painfully underpowered, and today im starting to get used to it, but im still not giving enough power while letting the clutch out. Anybody else think so?
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[mchaggis]

Practise makes perfect. I've not lost to any car at the traffic light GP so far. Whether they'd actually been trying or not is another matter. I actually found the Fazer more difficult than my bike, but that's probably because I wasn't used to it and was a bit scared of dropping it. The consequences of losing your balance on something weighing 120kg aren't quite the same as something of 200kg.

Riding is the trickier part if you're trying to keep up. I had the amusement of a rideout of me on my bike with others on a CBR600RR, VTR SP1, TL and an R6. I caught up at the lights and at some junctions, but as the roads were too straight (and up hill) I lost them at a crossroads.


As an aside, riding behind a TL with race cans on, I couldn't actually hear whether my bike's engine was running.
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[Davo]

Hi

My last bike was a Hayabusa, and that was so easy to ride, it had a shed load of power on tap, good handling etc.. however it can make you lazy to some degree i.e not fussy what gear your in etc.. I chopped it in for my current bike (R6), and to get that going at a good rate of knots, you've got to work both the engine and the gearbox hard to get a good result.

The same with my friends RS125 which I had to pick up from a garage (his CBT had expired), to get that moving at a decent pace you had to keep the revs up (keep the bike in the powerband). However it did feel more rewarding though.

[colin1]

mmm I love the sound of TL's
one went for way less than £2k recently on ebay too
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[haGGard]

On a 50 i would say the clutch is almost non-existant, and just dumping it with sufficeint revs would set you off fine!
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[Andy C]

[Aikman666]

Well right now im sitting at 6000-7000 revs before trying to take off. My last bike could take off with but a little revs. I think it might also be because the clutch is so sharp, not what im used too. And the bike has only done 115km, so i dont think the clutch will have been bedded in yet. Going to get more practice in today, will let y'all know how it is!
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[fast_tzr]

the only way to really start these thing properly for a fast start is to get the revs in the powerband, usually 8000rpm does fine, and slip the clutch.

[stevo as b4]

I think launching or even pulling away normally without any stalling, wheelspin or wheelie issues is so much easier on a smaller low powered bike than it would be on a light, flighty, powerful litre sportsbike etc.
As for getting a fast start, well it's never needed to get safely away from cars at the lights, even on a 125, and if you pull away on the said RS125 out of the powerband, it's not going to exactly take seconds for it to pull through first gear, hit the powerband, and then be ready for several up changes in fast succession.

The clutch is far more important for a full power race start, and even more so on a big bike, say a Blade or R1 for example, as these bikes cannot put anything like their full power to the tarmac from a standstill, without something going badly wrong, so thats why you need more clutch control than on a small bike. the flip side to that is that a the bigger engine means that it takes little more than tickover revs in traffic to pull away smoothly, without stalling/bogging, which a 50 or 125 cc bike wont manage.

[ZZR Girl]

I agree that lower powered bikes are harder to ride. I think it's also a question of weight and balance.

Before I got back on the road again, having not been on a bike for so long, I took some refresher training lessons. They started me off on a 125 to get used to riding again, and then let me use a 600 Diversion.

I was absolute pants on the 125 and got on much better with the heavier Divvy. I was hopeless doing the figure of eights on the 125 but had much better control on the 600. I found this strange because I would have thought the lighter the bike, the easier it would be to control and ride, but it wasn't the case.
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[MementoMori]

I haven't ridden anything bigger than a 50, but I do believe clutch control takes a lot of getting used to.

I find though, that I can get my RS smoothly off the line at about 3500 revs, and it accelerates quickly.

Never needed to execute a racing start, but the times I have done, I've been at about 6000, never actually tried it at anything higher.

I like having a bike I have to work, as it is more fun and more rewarding.
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[Rob W]