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I went down at Road Altanta this last Saturday, 6th time I've hit the pavement, 3rd time the zx10 has been down, but first time at the track.
I'm fine except for a little bruising, bike doesn't look too bad either.
There is a lot to talk about and I don't have much time right now, so I'll just give you guys the quick and dirty about the crash and save the full report for later when I get all the videos edited and uploaded.
I think it was the second session after lunch, I was just starting to get in the groove. The morning had been a crash fest and red flags kept us from getting in a good session.
I was going into turn 10a, a tight left hander at the end of the long back straight where you brake hard from top speed to maybe 50 mph or so.
I wasn't going into the turn too hot or anything, so I wasn't really panicked, but I noticed that the bike wasn't slowing down as much as usual as I pulled in the brake lever. So I kept pulling all the way until the lever was touching my two other fingers on the grip (I two finger brake). Something was obviously wrong. I remember thinking fairly calmly, "I need to pit and see what the problem is". At that point I still thought I was going to make the turn. About a second later, I started getting that "oh shit feeling" as the turn in point was approaching and I was still going too fast.
I've always had the thinking that when you are going into a turn too fast, it's best to just hang in there and try and make the turn instead of standing it up and running off course, which pretty much guarantees the crash. So I held the brake in and started to turn in. I tried to just trail brake into the turn like always, but this time the speed was too much for the front tire to handle and the bike went down abruptly on the left side, sliding fairly gently into the gravel with me following it face down on the asphalt.
After talking to a few guys about it, our theory is that some shitty brake fluid was the culprit. I upgraded my brakes to stainless lines while back, but I used some regular auto parts store fluid when I should have used some high end motorcycle specific stuff. Apparrently the boiling point is much lower with the cheap stuff, and after a bunch of hard braking, air bubbles must have formed in the lines causing me to loose brake pressure. A pretty stupid mistake on my part, and I feel pretty embarrassed that I didn't know the difference between the two considering how much time I spend reading about motorcycle stuff, but oh well. Could have been worse, and now I know.
I had my tank cam rolling at the time, but the crash must have corrupted the file or something because I can't get it to play back. The track photographer was right there, so I think he may have gotten some shots of it, but haven't seen tthose pics yet. But here are a few my buddy who was watching took.
This is a previous lap, showing how things are suppose to happen. I'm the guy on the black bike.
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And here is how you don't take turn 10 at RA.
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It looked like a comfortable place to take a little nap.
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Walking away from yet another crash on the 10 But at least I'm walking...
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The crash truck.
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From what I can tell, the damage doesn't look to bad. I won't really know until I strip everything off... again. But so far it looks like I just need new rearsets, shift linkage, steering damper mount ( I think the damper itself is ok), and some fiberglass/resin to fix the cracked fairings. The bike didnt tumble, so I think the forks/frame etc are ok.
Check back later for the rest of the report along with videos and more pics. And if anyone knows of a way to retrieve a bad file from a digital camera, let me know. I would love to see the video of the actual crash.
I'm fine except for a little bruising, bike doesn't look too bad either.
There is a lot to talk about and I don't have much time right now, so I'll just give you guys the quick and dirty about the crash and save the full report for later when I get all the videos edited and uploaded.
I think it was the second session after lunch, I was just starting to get in the groove. The morning had been a crash fest and red flags kept us from getting in a good session.
I was going into turn 10a, a tight left hander at the end of the long back straight where you brake hard from top speed to maybe 50 mph or so.
I wasn't going into the turn too hot or anything, so I wasn't really panicked, but I noticed that the bike wasn't slowing down as much as usual as I pulled in the brake lever. So I kept pulling all the way until the lever was touching my two other fingers on the grip (I two finger brake). Something was obviously wrong. I remember thinking fairly calmly, "I need to pit and see what the problem is". At that point I still thought I was going to make the turn. About a second later, I started getting that "oh shit feeling" as the turn in point was approaching and I was still going too fast.
I've always had the thinking that when you are going into a turn too fast, it's best to just hang in there and try and make the turn instead of standing it up and running off course, which pretty much guarantees the crash. So I held the brake in and started to turn in. I tried to just trail brake into the turn like always, but this time the speed was too much for the front tire to handle and the bike went down abruptly on the left side, sliding fairly gently into the gravel with me following it face down on the asphalt.
After talking to a few guys about it, our theory is that some shitty brake fluid was the culprit. I upgraded my brakes to stainless lines while back, but I used some regular auto parts store fluid when I should have used some high end motorcycle specific stuff. Apparrently the boiling point is much lower with the cheap stuff, and after a bunch of hard braking, air bubbles must have formed in the lines causing me to loose brake pressure. A pretty stupid mistake on my part, and I feel pretty embarrassed that I didn't know the difference between the two considering how much time I spend reading about motorcycle stuff, but oh well. Could have been worse, and now I know.
I had my tank cam rolling at the time, but the crash must have corrupted the file or something because I can't get it to play back. The track photographer was right there, so I think he may have gotten some shots of it, but haven't seen tthose pics yet. But here are a few my buddy who was watching took.
This is a previous lap, showing how things are suppose to happen. I'm the guy on the black bike.
And here is how you don't take turn 10 at RA.
It looked like a comfortable place to take a little nap.
Walking away from yet another crash on the 10
But at least I'm walking...
The crash truck.
From what I can tell, the damage doesn't look to bad. I won't really know until I strip everything off... again. But so far it looks like I just need new rearsets, shift linkage, steering damper mount ( I think the damper itself is ok), and some fiberglass/resin to fix the cracked fairings. The bike didnt tumble, so I think the forks/frame etc are ok.
Check back later for the rest of the report along with videos and more pics. And if anyone knows of a way to retrieve a bad file from a digital camera, let me know. I would love to see the video of the actual crash.
