Videos of my friends and I at the "track."

[dekaliber]

About a month or so ago, I found an abandoned subdivision that was apparently foreclosed a few years back. They've only gotten as far as paving, and some of the lots have been marked as sold, but there hasn't been any real developments since then. The subdivision is tucked away at the end of a street, and as a result gets no traffic.

It's a nice ~0.8 mile loop with 7 turns. The 3 buddies I ride with and I have taken to using it as an impromptu track. The way that we've been doing it is to have the person being timed filming with my GoPro, and calculate lap times through the video. We usually do 1 warmup lap with 3-4 timed hot laps. No passing of course. I've uploaded a few videos in case anyone's interested:

dekaliber's Channel - YouTube

(And yes, those are brake markers that we put up.)

My friends and are all around the same skill level. 3 of us have been riding since April and one has been riding for a couple of years. I have the FZ6R. The 3 other bikes are an Kawasaki Ninja 650R, a Kawasaki ER-6N, and a Triumph Street Triple. None of us are particularly good, but we're all getting better. I've recently started experimenting with hanging off the bike more as I was starting to drag the pegs on some corners.

Of course, the FZ6R currently holds the lap record!

 

[iSpoolin]

Looks like fun!

This is why I wish every bike came with a lap timer! I LOVE the one on my Daytona. I know exactly how long i've been riding, and on some of the "laps" I do I like to see just how long it took me.

 

[Marthy]

That's pretty cool! You guys should paint the edges of the road red and white. I might suggest also to cut few trees and a couple of hail bail or hold tires in front of the bridge. You the round about as a chicane (good for practicing braking zone and quick transition... ) the course is too easy. Might be a good thing to remove the chop chop stuff in the middle of the road... almost had a "OH $HIT" moment there...

But that cool... not very safe, but it a close course!

 

[Buffalojump]

From watching the video, it sounded like you were using the rear brake to slow down. The rear brake is a no no on the track, and you should only be using your front brake. I like that you put up some braking markers. I wish I could find an undeveloped neighborhood like that :thumbup:

 

[iSpoolin]

From watching the video, it sounded like you were using the rear brake to slow down. The rear brake is a no no on the track, and you should only be using your front brake. I like that you put up some braking markers. I wish I could find an undeveloped neighborhood like that :thumbup:

He is not on an actual track, he's still street riding. I'd suggest using the rear brake.

 

[kevin8198]

That's pretty freakin awesome!:thumbup:

 

[dekaliber]

That's pretty cool! You guys should paint the edges of the road red and white. I might suggest also to cut few trees and a couple of hail bail or hold tires in front of the bridge. You the round about as a chicane (good for practicing braking zone and quick transition... ) the course is too easy. Might be a good thing to remove the chop chop stuff in the middle of the road... almost had a "OH $HIT" moment there...

But that cool... not very safe, but it a close course!

Unfortunately, I think making any "permanent" modifications to the track would probably put us over the line into from harmless trespassing to vandalism. While the property is bank-owned, I suspect someone would be upset if we started cutting down trees and as a result, be less tolerant about our regular visits.

We've actually used that little roundabout in the course a couple times to test it out. I think it adds some nice dynamics to the course but since we're all pretty new to this, we've been keeping it simple for now.

From watching the video, it sounded like you were using the rear brake to slow down. The rear brake is a no no on the track, and you should only be using your front brake. I like that you put up some braking markers. I wish I could find an undeveloped neighborhood like that :thumbup:

Yeah, I was really sloppy with my braking on that run, which ended up being fast as a result of recklessness rather than smoothness and precision. In addition to locking up the rear brake a couple of times, jamming on the front brakes ended up causing the suspension to bottom out and chatter on a few occasions, which inevitably screws up corner entry. I've since avoided using my rear brake on the heavy braking into a corner and being much more progressive, and as a result my times are getting much more consistent and the OHSH*T moments are much more scarce. I imagine that a dab of rear brake, used gently, can still come in handy mid-corner if I need to scrub a little more speed.

This is why I wish every bike came with a lap timer! I LOVE the one on my Daytona. I know exactly how long i've been riding, and on some of the "laps" I do I like to see just how long it took me.

I hear you man! I test rode a 2011 Kawasaki ZX-6R at their Test & Ride event about a month ago and it similarly had a lap timer. I will likely be upgrading to supersport in the next year or so once I get more comfortable with the bike. I've only ridden for about 1400 miles.

 

[b_who]

Thats a lucky find
That looks like a lotttt of fun. Would love to come across something like that around me.

Be safe out there though and good luck hope ur smashing on ur friends haha

 

[Rookasaki]

Dude, so awesome... I'm Jealous :bow:
Looks like you have decent skill. Definitely used way to much back brake... Those wood chips almost got you tho.

 

[Doncan]

Very nice videos :thumbup: If possible; can you guys do a chase cam video so we can see you leaning on the curves ??

 

[Uno979]

OMG OMG OMG OMG :beer: :bow: opcorn: :drool: :rockon: :cheer: :wav: :iconbeer: :steve: :Sport:

They need to close down the idea of a neighborhood and make it a track!!!

 

[dekaliber]

Very nice videos :thumbup: If possible; can you guys do a chase cam video so we can see you leaning on the curves ??

Actually, we have 2 up. This was right after we started practicing hanging off the bike in corners to lower our center of gravity.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEQt9LZeP68]Tai at BW Raceway - 8/25/2011 Practice - YouTube[/ame] - my buddy on the 650R following
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ7Hwxo3oJQ]Ben at BW Raceway - 8/25/2011 Practice - YouTube[/ame] - me chasing my buddy

I was going to see if there's a way to rig the camera up in front of the bike to capture a better view...

 

[Funkmaxtor]

I placed my camera just under the mirror on the left hand side of the bike using an adhesive mount. This keeps the entire bike out of the shot (if you so chose to keep it far enough forward). Just a thought. Here is an example of what it looks like. This video is pretty shaky because of the road, not the placement of the camera.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48JjudRdP3o]Stairway to Heaven 1st Person View - YouTube[/ame]

 

[dekaliber]

That's pretty good -- part of the reason we did place it behind the windshield was to be able to see the speedo. It's helpful to see how quickly we're entering corners, our max speed before braking on the straights, etc.

The other day I found that you can actually use the suction cup mount on the windshield right where the Yamaha logo is. By bending the arm down you can position the camera right around where the headlight is. We taped some chase cam footage but I haven't seen what it looks like yet. Gotta get the camera back from my friend.

 

[Funkmaxtor]

I was torn with not being able to see my speed on camera as well. Then I started posting videos on YouTube and thought better about letting people see my speedometer. I know you are on a closed road so that really doesn't matter for you.

 

[Spunky99]

I was torn with not being able to see my speed on camera as well. Then I started posting videos on YouTube and thought better about letting people see my speedometer. I know you are on a closed road so that really doesn't matter for you.

LOL....good call...I don't want people to know how fast I'm going either....