When is too much, too much and over the top?

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Kneeslider

Race Dog
Joined
Jan 26, 2012
Messages
755
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Location
Knyp Town
Bike
AJS (all models)
Spent the day at the track today watching all and sundry having fun circulating and generally having a good time as it was open track day.
Wandering around the pits and chatting to a bunch of people, one thing hit me like a sledge hammer, the cost and level of sophistication of some of the machines there.
Something about a fool and his money come to mind, but that is a subject for another thread.

Ok, so as we all know, as electronics get smaller and lighter and more programmable, they are finding their way into bikes on an ever increasing scale, to the point, in my opinion where it is now just beyond the ridiculous.
Never mind, ABS and anti skid, that is steam technology already.
Case in point.





The latest super duper go fast all the bells and whistles MV Augusta, ridden by a chick, no less.
This thing has the full programmable electronics suite on board.
So what you do is, you turn a couple of laps and then pit and download the data.
Then according to the track and the conditions, you program in all the parameters you want for each and every meter of the track, The thing talks to the GPS satellites and knows exactly where you are every meter around the track.
It talks to satellites, for goodness sake.
So for corner one, you may want less preload on the suspension and more brake bias towards the rear wheel as it is a downhill corner, so you set it up, corner two you may want more preload on the front but less damping, so you set it up, corner three you may want everything near rock solid.......and so it carries on.
Once you have set it all up via the software it is done, you go out and turn laps and the onboard computer makes millions of calculations a second and adjusts the suspension as required for every part of the track, takes care of the braking, torque delivery to the back wheel, and any other parameter you could possibly dream up.
So wind the twist grip to the stop, make sure you take the right line and hold on for the ride, well not quite but pretty damn close.
My question is, where is the fun in that, what point is there in the bike doing all the work, surely a sense of achievement and accomplishment comes from piloting the motorcycle around on the ragged edge and shaving a fraction of a second off your best time.
So when is too much, just too much.
Maybe it is just me, now what ever happened to good old Booysens Reeds, and where is my dremel tool.


 
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