New York's Fastest?

[flyinlow]

Anyone seen these articles? Couple guys supposed to be the fastest on two wheels, but never go to the track, call track guys pussies, etc.

The first link is the article, the second is a video. What I find interesting about the video is that at 186 the road signs and cars they are passing aren't flying by. I believe its 186kph, not mph (which is about 111mph). But why is the tach all the way up at redline? Different size sprockets than stock? Would be interested in opinions of guys who have raced and hit these speeds, is this a fake? Also the GPS confirmed speed I believe is also in KPH

Either way, these guys are just a couple of attention whores, punks and they were able to convince someone that they are the coolest and fastest.

http://hellforleathermagazine.com/frontlines/nycf/nycf-layout.html

http://hellforleathermagazine.com/2010/05/bmw-s1000rr-long-island-expres.html

[Busa dave]

You can see on the GPS that it's showing MPH in the upper center.  And 186 is the governor that the European Common Market put on motorcycles in 2000. So I think it is accurate and showing in MPH.  Been There done that, I have photo's of my GPS at 205 for my 2000 Busa.  God Speed

[flyinlow]

I hear you on the horsepower. I remember reading a Cycle World article in the late 80's on how much more horsepower it took to go just a few miles an hour faster for the ZX Ninja's at the time. Just to get 1 or 2 mph in the 170mph range was somewhere around 10hp needed, with the current aerodynamics of the bike.

[flyinlow]

So I started thinking about this, how could we validate how fast this guy is going? I watched the video again, couldn't see mile markers on the freeway so no way to figure it out that way.

Then I noticed the light poles. Light poles on expressways are 300 feet apart typically. I also zoomed in on the Long Island Expressway in Google earth and found several light poles in the median and measured the distance between them with the tools in google earth, it also came up to 300 feet.

I watched the video until he was doing 186 consistently and started timing from one pole to the other, it pretty much came out to 2 seconds each time. So lets do the math:
300 ft every 2 seconds is (300X(60/2))=9000 feet per minute. There are 5280 feet in a mile so:
9000/5280=1.705 miles per minute, so to get mph take 1.705 times 60 minutes in an hour
1.705x60=102.27 mph

186kph=115.58 mph
At max speed there is typically a 10% error in sport bike speedometers to the high side

115.58 mph - 10%=104.22 mph and my calculations show 102.27mph, pretty close.

Now my timer did not do tenths of a second, so I'm off a little, but I think I have proven that the bike is reading in kph and not mph. I think these guys did some creative video editing on the GPS to superimpose mph instead of kph and the video at speed is so blurry that he might show mph on the speedo when stopped, but they cut and splice many times throughout the video that they could easily change the speedo to the other setting. At speed, its too blurry to tell whether the indicator is kph or mph. The S1000RR picks up the speed from the ABS sensors, so changing sprockets would not affect the speed readout, only changing the rear tire size would do that.

[Greg]

So I started thinking about this, how could we validate how fast this guy is going? I watched the video again, couldn't see mile markers on the freeway so no way to figure it out that way.

Then I noticed the light poles. Light poles on expressways are 300 feet apart typically. I also zoomed in on the Long Island Expressway in Google earth and found several light poles in the median and measured the distance between them with the tools in google earth, it also came up to 300 feet.

I watched the video until he was doing 186 consistently and started timing from one pole to the other, it pretty much came out to 2 seconds each time. So lets do the math:
300 ft every 2 seconds is (300X(60/2))=9000 feet per minute. There are 5280 feet in a mile so:
9000/5280=1.705 miles per minute, so to get mph take 1.705 times 60 minutes in an hour
1.705x60=102.27 mph

186kph=115.58 mph
At max speed there is typically a 10% error in sport bike speedometers to the high side

115.58 mph - 10%=104.22 mph and my calculations show 102.27mph, pretty close.

Now my timer did not do tenths of a second, so I'm off a little, but I think I have proven that the bike is reading in kph and not mph. I think these guys did some creative video editing on the GPS to superimpose mph instead of kph and the video at speed is so blurry that he might show mph on the speedo when stopped, but they cut and splice many times throughout the video that they could easily change the speedo to the other setting. At speed, its too blurry to tell whether the indicator is kph or mph. The S1000RR picks up the speed from the ABS sensors, so changing sprockets would not affect the speed readout, only changing the rear tire size would do that.

As someone who *once* did close to 186, I'd have to vote that this IS mph, not kph.

As someone who *has been known to on more than one occasion* go 104.22, I can tell you it sure looks to me to be faster than 104. Either way I agree, they're attention whores.

PS. Also note they're going ~40 on the entrance ramp curves. If it where kph then they'd be going 24mph, and it looks to me like they're going faster than that, IMO.

[flyinlow]

So I started thinking about this, how could we validate how fast this guy is going? I watched the video again, couldn't see mile markers on the freeway so no way to figure it out that way.

Then I noticed the light poles. Light poles on expressways are 300 feet apart typically. I also zoomed in on the Long Island Expressway in Google earth and found several light poles in the median and measured the distance between them with the tools in google earth, it also came up to 300 feet.

I watched the video until he was doing 186 consistently and started timing from one pole to the other, it pretty much came out to 2 seconds each time. So lets do the math:
300 ft every 2 seconds is (300X(60/2))=9000 feet per minute. There are 5280 feet in a mile so:
9000/5280=1.705 miles per minute, so to get mph take 1.705 times 60 minutes in an hour
1.705x60=102.27 mph

186kph=115.58 mph
At max speed there is typically a 10% error in sport bike speedometers to the high side

115.58 mph - 10%=104.22 mph and my calculations show 102.27mph, pretty close.

Now my timer did not do tenths of a second, so I'm off a little, but I think I have proven that the bike is reading in kph and not mph. I think these guys did some creative video editing on the GPS to superimpose mph instead of kph and the video at speed is so blurry that he might show mph on the speedo when stopped, but they cut and splice many times throughout the video that they could easily change the speedo to the other setting. At speed, its too blurry to tell whether the indicator is kph or mph. The S1000RR picks up the speed from the ABS sensors, so changing sprockets would not affect the speed readout, only changing the rear tire size would do that.

As someone who *once* did close to 186, I'd have to vote that this IS mph, not kph.

As someone who *has been known to on more than one occasion* go 104.22, I can tell you it sure looks to me to be faster than 104. Either way I agree, they're attention whores.

PS. Also note they're going ~40 on the entrance ramp curves. If it where kph then they'd be going 24mph, and it looks to me like they're going faster than that, IMO.

What I'm saying is they have done some creative video editing, so at the lower speeds it is actually mph, but at the higher speeds it is kph. If you notice, there are many cuts and splices in the video, it would be easy for anyone to do with some simple video editing software.

[Greg]

10-4, I see your point. I didn't read your post all the way through so I missed where you mentioned that.   

[vince]

From the start if you count the gear shifts I count that it is in 6th gear at 186 and 500 RPM short of red line would be right. I have been at this speed many times and it looks right to me. My bike tops out at 184 on the gps and it is 500 RPM short of red line in 6th gear.

[flyinlow]

Good point Vince, although they still may have done some video editing, but you might be right.