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General Category => General Banter => Topic started by: Plus_P on March 17, 2012, 12:41:08 PM
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Hey group,
On my AM ride today, with it being as humid as it is today (Wow, March 17th!?!), and probably a combo of the frost coming out, sections I was riding were "sweating" (dark/damp), worse in the shadows. I'm sure I'm being overly cautious, and would appreciate hearing from more experienced riders, when you are in wet corners (I'd guess it doesn't matter if its drying after rain, or sweating, like I'm seeing today?) what is your reduced %, compared to "dry" conditions, that you are A) 100% confident/comfortable or B) Increased pucker-factor, but obviously, still 99% certain you're not going to feel the bike slipping under you?
Thanks,
+P / Wade
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How much to back off on a wet road for me depends mainly on how clean I think the pavement is.
Wet traction with good street tires absent of oil, coolant, dirt or other crap on the pavement is really very good. What makes the wet something to worry about is in general how slick it makes oil, coolant, dirt or other crap on the pavement. In practice this means, when the road sweats or it rains after a long period of no rain, I back it off quite a bit and assume that the center of the lane between the tire tracks and painted areas will be very slick. Once it has rained hard enough for a long enough period of time and tend to back off very little as the rain will usually have washed the crap off the road. There are places, where I expect enough crap to get on the pavement, like major intersections, and slow steep uphill sections where i generally assume the pavement is never clean of crap, no matter how much rain falls.
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I'm pretty conservative rider and even more so on slimy pavement. Even after good rains, there can be periods of dry weather where dust finds it's way onto pavement in ag zones and will literally sponge up dew in the right conditions. Don't get lulled into thinking wet pavement will grab in the middle of summer. I've seen more than one rider crash in early morning dew on corners they were not expecting moisture ladened slime.
It's all about experience. After a few years, you'll know how to feel tires starting to lose grip. There are no simple guidelines here IMO, except to go slow when you just don't know.
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Sounds like a MN state motorcycle safety campaign slogan, "Go slow, when you don't know."
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The roads and ground underneath are still cold/cool so the air is actually condensing on it when it is cooled to the dewpoint as it lingers on the pavement. This morning the dewpoint was 60 degrees so pretty easy for it to condense on the roads.
I go pretty slow on dew covered roads. I will however get more confident coming out of the apex as I get to know the wet roads. I don't mind a little rear tire slip, and don't have a hard time managing it. However, if the front tire slips leaned over that is a bad thing and pretty uncomfortable feeling too.
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Sounds like a MN state motorcycle safety campaign slogan, "Go slow, when you don't know."
where is the "LIKE" button....
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Hey group,
On my AM ride today, with it being as humid as it is today (Wow, March 17th!?!), and probably a combo of the frost coming out, sections I was riding were "sweating" (dark/damp), worse in the shadows. I'm sure I'm being overly cautious, and would appreciate hearing from more experienced riders, when you are in wet corners (I'd guess it doesn't matter if its drying after rain, or sweating, like I'm seeing today?) what is your reduced %, compared to "dry" conditions, that you are A) 100% confident/comfortable or B) Increased pucker-factor, but obviously, still 99% certain you're not going to feel the bike slipping under you?
Thanks,
+P / Wade
Only comparing todays conditions on the dry corners vs the ones that still had visible moisture on them on my ride--I was down about 10 mph on the damp/wet ones from similar turns that were dry...
IN the summer this difference would be less for me.
There is no absolute number though, atleast not for me-I go by feel...
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Thanks for the replies. All makes sense.
Wade