Well I finally went out to ride my local track, Pacific Raceways. Boy...I forgot just how freaking bumpy that track is. But it is a great place to do some bike setup due to the long straight and the hard braking into turn 3. Other than going out and doing some recreating I also took the opportunity to do some testing.
Since I converted my bike's chassis to a superbike I've been running a Bandit 1200 5.5" rear wheel. Last year when I was riding Pirelli's I would run a 180 Diablo Superbike Slick on the rear. This year with my switch to Dunlop I was recommended to run a 190 NTEC. Needless to say that 190 NTEC is massive for the SV650 weighting in at 32lbs mounted on that Bandit rim. Well at the last OMRRA round I had enough and got a stock SV650 rear wheel to mount up a 165 Dunlop slick. It was a great improvement but there was a nagging side effect. At one point in the lean the bike would just want to fall down. Well one day I ran into Dunlop's fitting chart and it turns out the preferred rim width for that tire is a 5.5" rim. Bingo!
So I got it mounted it up at the Pacific round and went for some laps. Boy is that much better. The lean is very consistant and doesn't want to fall down in the turn. I'm very very pleased.
Anyhow...time for some pictures from Brandon Bones of Studio819 (http://studio819.smugmug.com/)
