BlingKing
Race Dog
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2010
- Messages
- 1,073
- Reaction score
- 36
- Bike
- BMW R1200GS
Well there I was swanning around Clarens and Fouriesburg on my Adventure (as you do...) stopped off at the kroeg in Fouriesburg for a coolie and bumped into Hentie, said hoozeet and off he went, which led to a discussion in the pub about the S1000RR after the guys found out I used to run a BMW dealership.
Well the same old friggin question came up that I get prolly 5 times a week........"so what's it like" and I came up with the same old answer....."I haven't a friggin clue, since no-ones offered me a ride yet..."
I kak you not - it seems once you leave BMW's fold you are the anti-Christ, I even asked Richard at one of Lyndhursts track days and got an emphatic no, sorry I am opposed to licking anyones arse to DEMO a bike that I will probably buy as soon as money allows :xxbah:
It's also kinda dumb when you consider how many of those bikes I could have sold just by the way I rave about things.......but hey ho - I went and ordered a GSXR750 for the track just out of spite!
Here comes the happy part of the story......we end up in Clarens and guess who is there - Hentie and his buds again and we end up in the same discourse about the 1000RR, as I get halfway thru whining, Hentie chucks the keys at me with a simple 'weg is jy....."
I crossed the road to the bike faster than an AWB member running thru Soweto singing "this land is my land" and headed off to Fouriesburg with a grin on my face that would have taken a baseball bat to swipe off!!! :biggrin:
Being a new bike to me I was a bit cautious in the first part of the ride until I got my ‘eye in’.....those that know me know that I ride my Adventure pretty much flat out everywhere, but there is a huge difference in warp between 200Km/h and 300Km/h and that warp needs to be respected! :deal:
First impression, the bike was sooo easy to ride, sweet, sweet gearshift, with a very yummy quickshifter that produces that hard-on inducing pop every time you change up mmmmmm! :3some:
The seating position is awesome although it’s a superbike, it doesn’t produce that trussed chicken seating pozzy and it’s very easy to settle into quickly.
The power initially was very linear (and moerse strong) and the delivery was very smooth but nonetheless IMPRESSIVE. Halfway up the pass though I discovered that I was missing that big bang effect that the ride on the new R1 gave me......until I looked down and discovered why, I was taking it up to 10’s and 11’s on the Tacho......my speech bubble then read “what about all the rest of those revs then?”
So Tazz being Tazz he dropped a cog and whacked it open.........HOLY COW...that’s when it all began to make sense, the friggin powerhorse then set off up the hill with a howling growl from the airbox, a scream from the (standard) pipe and a burst of acceleration that made my nuts tighten and my adrenalin pump!!!!!!
Eish but the problem she was one.......I got to the corner at the top of the pass at like 50% faster than I did two hours before on my steam train.......so with thoughts of what they were going to put on my RIP thread in the “Fallen” section of the Think Bike Forum.....I pitched it into the corner and kept my riding wits about me looking through the corner like I teach and came out the other side at around 245 Km/h wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place???????
There’s a couple of bumps in that corner, no worries they didn’t even worry the uber bike, the sudden acceleration halfway through the corner didn’t upset the beast or make it track different, it just did what it was told and scoffed at me on the exit!
So now with a new wave of gees in my underjocks I set off across the rest of the pass at a pace that had my heart pumping and leaving me with a new sense of life that I haven’t had since Dilana stuck her tongue in my ear, I found myself grinning widely and thinking, only a biker knows why a dog sticks its’ head out of a car window!!!
I was also feeling a bit guilty about going so far on the loaner, but I figured Hentie knew the Tazzman well enough to know I was not going to give up on Surrender Hill!!!!!! There was one thing left to do, first try the long sweeping, steeking corners at the end of the pass, because these in my mind are the true test of a superbike, the way it traverses long flat out wide open bends.
A lot of peeps will think I am biased when I say this - but understand I am not beholden to BMW anymore so if it’s kak I will say it’s kak, (like the front end on my G450X was!!) This bike is the BEST EVER, the way it handled those long sweeping fast bends was incredible. Better even than my previous GSXR1000 which had R50K’s worth of suspension and wheels and certainly better than any of the other Jap bikes I have ridden (read all!) The only other bike that did come close was the RSV Aprillia which was twitchy on the slower speed stuff.
So I came out of the sweeps with one more mission in mind, the long straight away after the pass, this is a beaut, it is dead straight you can see all the way downhill and have full vision of the road coming in..........one thing left to do – WHACK IT!!!!
Understand that this is a stock standard bike, standard pipe and air filter and it still wanted to go after the 323 Km/h that I saw on the digital Speedo.......it was only eksteen that chickened out as the road believe me gets very very narrow at that speed!!!!! If I were to guestimate the true speed – I would call it at around 308 Km/h, but like all top speed figures, open to conjecture. However knowing BMW’s as I do every single one of them have a decreasing margin of over-read the higher the speed is (generally 3% at top end) Ag whatever it is for a standard bike it’s freaking fast!
I swung the metallic green monster around and headed back at speed to Clarens, again marvelling at the bikes sure footed approach through the sweeps and bends........ Those that know that pass will tell you of this corner, it is a right handed downhill sweep – good vision all through, medium radius with a good camber and surface, in simple terms the perfect friggin corner – it’s my favourite!
Mission statement for this corner is test Petersen’s theorem........ Dave reckons that the traction control on this puppy is so awesome he was grabbing handfuls of it mid corner and letting the electronics do the rest, now this I had to see, (sawry Hentie!)
As I reached the apex of the corner, I simply whacked the yaya grip wide open, there wasn’t the crackle and pop you’d expect – like I saw from the WSBK Kawasaki’s outta Wesbank this weekend, it was more of a dead throttle effect, where you could feel it working – it just didn’t make such a big hoo-hah about it. But the kick ass effect coming out of the bend as I started to straighten up is the one that erections are made of, you could feel the surge of power gripping the black stuff as more of the tyre was presented to it - this could make me a junkie very quickly! In fact if I don’t get on the track soon I am going to need rehabilitation!
The last test that I performed and I would love to tell you this was all controlled and planned, is the brake test.......I simply arrived at the T junction by the Golf Estate like 180 Km/h too fast and well let’s just say I had to apply the Brembo’s rather forcefully! Again the S1000RR didn’t disappoint, it just well ...it just stopped! In fact I found myself coming up short of the Stop street and where I had set my visual brake mark.....eish Boss this bike she is very good eish!
I struggled to find an analogy for this bike as it is just so superior to any other, so it kind of ended up as a car one......I would put the S1000RR down as the Audi RS4 and the other minions as an M3. They are both very quick, but while the M3 makes a big song a dance about it with its growling and dancing, the RS4 just uses its Quattro traction and pisses off into the distance leaving everyone wondering just what happened!
Did I feel it is worth its asking price – oh hell yeah, do I feel that it is the best bike I have ever ridden – oh hell yeah, would I buy one – oh hell yeah, did I make a mess in my rider gear on that test ride – oh hell yeah!!!!!!!
Thanks for the ride Hentie, you gotta know Boet that when I buy one, it ain’t gonna be from anyone else but you.....and that goes for all my purchases from here on out. That by the way was the deal I made with myself, whoever gives me a ride first will be the person I buy from in future! That’s just how life works guys and gals, well done Hochland Motorrad!
Well the same old friggin question came up that I get prolly 5 times a week........"so what's it like" and I came up with the same old answer....."I haven't a friggin clue, since no-ones offered me a ride yet..."
I kak you not - it seems once you leave BMW's fold you are the anti-Christ, I even asked Richard at one of Lyndhursts track days and got an emphatic no, sorry I am opposed to licking anyones arse to DEMO a bike that I will probably buy as soon as money allows :xxbah:
It's also kinda dumb when you consider how many of those bikes I could have sold just by the way I rave about things.......but hey ho - I went and ordered a GSXR750 for the track just out of spite!
Here comes the happy part of the story......we end up in Clarens and guess who is there - Hentie and his buds again and we end up in the same discourse about the 1000RR, as I get halfway thru whining, Hentie chucks the keys at me with a simple 'weg is jy....."
I crossed the road to the bike faster than an AWB member running thru Soweto singing "this land is my land" and headed off to Fouriesburg with a grin on my face that would have taken a baseball bat to swipe off!!! :biggrin:
Being a new bike to me I was a bit cautious in the first part of the ride until I got my ‘eye in’.....those that know me know that I ride my Adventure pretty much flat out everywhere, but there is a huge difference in warp between 200Km/h and 300Km/h and that warp needs to be respected! :deal:
First impression, the bike was sooo easy to ride, sweet, sweet gearshift, with a very yummy quickshifter that produces that hard-on inducing pop every time you change up mmmmmm! :3some:
The seating position is awesome although it’s a superbike, it doesn’t produce that trussed chicken seating pozzy and it’s very easy to settle into quickly.
The power initially was very linear (and moerse strong) and the delivery was very smooth but nonetheless IMPRESSIVE. Halfway up the pass though I discovered that I was missing that big bang effect that the ride on the new R1 gave me......until I looked down and discovered why, I was taking it up to 10’s and 11’s on the Tacho......my speech bubble then read “what about all the rest of those revs then?”
So Tazz being Tazz he dropped a cog and whacked it open.........HOLY COW...that’s when it all began to make sense, the friggin powerhorse then set off up the hill with a howling growl from the airbox, a scream from the (standard) pipe and a burst of acceleration that made my nuts tighten and my adrenalin pump!!!!!!
Eish but the problem she was one.......I got to the corner at the top of the pass at like 50% faster than I did two hours before on my steam train.......so with thoughts of what they were going to put on my RIP thread in the “Fallen” section of the Think Bike Forum.....I pitched it into the corner and kept my riding wits about me looking through the corner like I teach and came out the other side at around 245 Km/h wondering what all the fuss was about in the first place???????
There’s a couple of bumps in that corner, no worries they didn’t even worry the uber bike, the sudden acceleration halfway through the corner didn’t upset the beast or make it track different, it just did what it was told and scoffed at me on the exit!
So now with a new wave of gees in my underjocks I set off across the rest of the pass at a pace that had my heart pumping and leaving me with a new sense of life that I haven’t had since Dilana stuck her tongue in my ear, I found myself grinning widely and thinking, only a biker knows why a dog sticks its’ head out of a car window!!!
I was also feeling a bit guilty about going so far on the loaner, but I figured Hentie knew the Tazzman well enough to know I was not going to give up on Surrender Hill!!!!!! There was one thing left to do, first try the long sweeping, steeking corners at the end of the pass, because these in my mind are the true test of a superbike, the way it traverses long flat out wide open bends.
A lot of peeps will think I am biased when I say this - but understand I am not beholden to BMW anymore so if it’s kak I will say it’s kak, (like the front end on my G450X was!!) This bike is the BEST EVER, the way it handled those long sweeping fast bends was incredible. Better even than my previous GSXR1000 which had R50K’s worth of suspension and wheels and certainly better than any of the other Jap bikes I have ridden (read all!) The only other bike that did come close was the RSV Aprillia which was twitchy on the slower speed stuff.
So I came out of the sweeps with one more mission in mind, the long straight away after the pass, this is a beaut, it is dead straight you can see all the way downhill and have full vision of the road coming in..........one thing left to do – WHACK IT!!!!
Understand that this is a stock standard bike, standard pipe and air filter and it still wanted to go after the 323 Km/h that I saw on the digital Speedo.......it was only eksteen that chickened out as the road believe me gets very very narrow at that speed!!!!! If I were to guestimate the true speed – I would call it at around 308 Km/h, but like all top speed figures, open to conjecture. However knowing BMW’s as I do every single one of them have a decreasing margin of over-read the higher the speed is (generally 3% at top end) Ag whatever it is for a standard bike it’s freaking fast!
I swung the metallic green monster around and headed back at speed to Clarens, again marvelling at the bikes sure footed approach through the sweeps and bends........ Those that know that pass will tell you of this corner, it is a right handed downhill sweep – good vision all through, medium radius with a good camber and surface, in simple terms the perfect friggin corner – it’s my favourite!
Mission statement for this corner is test Petersen’s theorem........ Dave reckons that the traction control on this puppy is so awesome he was grabbing handfuls of it mid corner and letting the electronics do the rest, now this I had to see, (sawry Hentie!)
As I reached the apex of the corner, I simply whacked the yaya grip wide open, there wasn’t the crackle and pop you’d expect – like I saw from the WSBK Kawasaki’s outta Wesbank this weekend, it was more of a dead throttle effect, where you could feel it working – it just didn’t make such a big hoo-hah about it. But the kick ass effect coming out of the bend as I started to straighten up is the one that erections are made of, you could feel the surge of power gripping the black stuff as more of the tyre was presented to it - this could make me a junkie very quickly! In fact if I don’t get on the track soon I am going to need rehabilitation!
The last test that I performed and I would love to tell you this was all controlled and planned, is the brake test.......I simply arrived at the T junction by the Golf Estate like 180 Km/h too fast and well let’s just say I had to apply the Brembo’s rather forcefully! Again the S1000RR didn’t disappoint, it just well ...it just stopped! In fact I found myself coming up short of the Stop street and where I had set my visual brake mark.....eish Boss this bike she is very good eish!
I struggled to find an analogy for this bike as it is just so superior to any other, so it kind of ended up as a car one......I would put the S1000RR down as the Audi RS4 and the other minions as an M3. They are both very quick, but while the M3 makes a big song a dance about it with its growling and dancing, the RS4 just uses its Quattro traction and pisses off into the distance leaving everyone wondering just what happened!
Did I feel it is worth its asking price – oh hell yeah, do I feel that it is the best bike I have ever ridden – oh hell yeah, would I buy one – oh hell yeah, did I make a mess in my rider gear on that test ride – oh hell yeah!!!!!!!
Thanks for the ride Hentie, you gotta know Boet that when I buy one, it ain’t gonna be from anyone else but you.....and that goes for all my purchases from here on out. That by the way was the deal I made with myself, whoever gives me a ride first will be the person I buy from in future! That’s just how life works guys and gals, well done Hochland Motorrad!
