How far can litre bike development go?

[PTF]

!! Contains a bit of a spoiler for the latest Bike magazine if you're wanting to read it yourself !!

I hadn't ridden my blade for a month or two because of bad weather, and buying an old VFR for commuting, which I've been having a hoot on.

But yesterday I felt like commuting on it, so dug it out of the garage.

First few throttle openings were astonishing! HOW FAST?!?!? How smooth and easy to ride! My god. What a machine. I only got past 8k rpm a few times and it's just ridiculous up there. Simply breathtaking machine. Possibly a little lacking in soul compared to the VFR, and it isn't pleasurable to ride all the time like the VFR is, but for kicks and giggles in a fairly sensible disguise it's brilliant. Naturally I ended up riding like a complete tool on the way home and am now waiting for some dash cam footage to appear up in court of my arse flying past a Honda Jazz (or similar blurry object from my point of view) while giggling like a child.

And then today my copy of Bike magazine fell through the door. On the cover is a test comparing the current blade (same model as mine) with the H2, 2015 R1, 1299 and 2015 S1000RR.

To cut a long story short, the blade comes out last, though they do speak fairly highly of it, but in a slightly compassionate tone like they're feeling sorry for it.

It loses our on power massively, lap time by quite some margin, and they're generally not very complementary about the engine and suspension.

Having said all that, somehow spending £12k on a litre bike seems like a bargain compared to the prices quoted for the newer stuff where £15k-£22k seems the norm.

So. How far can they keep pushing things? People have now accepted that electronic rider aids are a good thing (i'm yet to be convinced that idiot proofing bikes is a good thing), forced induction is now out there in the mainstream. So presumably as long as they can develop the power reliably and manage it with electronics the sky is the limit?

Edited by PTF on Friday 22 May 14:53

[PTF]

trickywoo said:

PTF said:

So presumably as long as they can develop the power reliably and manage it with electronics the sky is the limit?

Maybe but how much power can you actually use / do you need?

Litre bikes have been able to do 180 mph+ and a standing quarter in 10 seconds for the past 10+ years. Do you really need to go faster?

Well that's one of the things that struck me when I rode the blade yesterday. The VFR felt plenty fast enough and the blade is massively quicker everywhere.

I was seriously thinking yesterday that I should probably sell the blade because it is just too much. A 600 would be a hoot on the road if you wanted to just rip round the rev counter and tackle some twisties. At least the speeds would be down 10-20%.

So what are these new breed aimed at? Is it just a side-effect of racing that they have to sell these as road bikes? H2 is the obv exclusion from that but I see that more as Kawasaki doing what they've always done and push road bike speeds quicker and quicker - GPZs, ZZRs, etc.

[PTF]

moanthebairns said:

They must be on the edge at the moment now. At some point they are only going to be truly usable on gp tracks. Maybe.

Yeah that is what i'm thinking.

Even the blade is waaaay too much on the road really. Sure you can ride is sensibly, and the throttle goes both ways as they say, but it's not possible (for me at least) to go for a ride without exploring the revs a bit.

And exploring the revs means doing something very illegal. 95 in 1st gear at the top of the revs means that it is not possible to rev it above about 9k rpm in any gear without being illegal!!

Saying that, i love it because it intimidates me. It's dangerous and i feel alive when using it.

When i open the garage it's like the shop window of a strip club where the blade is a dancer trying to get me to go for a lap dance, where the VFR is more like my wife.