Nanny tapped my brakes twice on really tight turns
You could take that as a warning from the Nanny to slow down, & that will certainly minimise the incidence of Nanny intervention like that, but she's responding to a whole range of input from a heap of sensors that are telling her a helluva lot about the ongoing dynamics of your Spyder & its cornering that are ganging up RIGHT NOW to tell her you aren't doing enough other stuff at
that speed to make it around
that corner with sufficient leeway for safety if anything changes!! :shocked:
So if the Nanny is doing that, speed is just
one thing that she's checking, so like Ron says above, practice good ryding skills all the time & see what else you can change to improve things in your favour?!? How about if you check how much steering you've got dialed in; are you pushing into the realms of over-steer?? Fitting better tires than the Kendas (not bloody hard to do at all!) tires with stiffer sidewalls & less tire squirm will take more speed & 'less than ideal' loading to get
that much squirm; while fitting a stiffer anti-sway bar (like BajaRon's) will keep the Spyder more level & avoid quite so much tire squirm quite so early. Similarly, getting more of your weight across the Spyder so it's down & inside the Spyder's CoG will minimise that too; as will less 'push' on the outside handlebar & more 'pull' on the inside bar, all helping to get your weight inside & down on any turn, as well as ensuring that your muscles 'interaction' with the Spyder & its suspension is lower & inside with relation to the Spyder's Roll Centre on that corner. And there's a heap more to consider & maybe change or improve once you really start looking critically at what's going on & being reported to the Nanny!
But without going into it all in too much more detail, if you
want to ryde harder, dropping your SPEED is not the
only way to minimise Nanny intervention. As others have said, learn to be as
smooth as you can in all your ryding & control inputs; fit proper tires instead of the crappy Kendas (IMO, doing that alone will likely make almost as big an improvement as fitting Ron's Bar, which can make a substantial improvement!); fit that better anti-sway bar; learn to get & keep your weight across to the inside of any corner & down as low as you can as soon as you can; use the minimum amount of steering input necessary to make a given turn (cos just one degree too much can trigger Nanny intervention!) & learn the Nanny's limits for how much steering &/or throttle input she'll accept at whatever speed for whatever turn; if you feel you need more steering input on any given turn, try pulling
harder on the inside bar (&
NOT pushing away on the outside bar, the 'equal & opposite force' thing makes that transfer of weight & force happen in entirely the wrong place & direction & that upsets the Nanny PDQ!) and practice getting more of your weight across to the inside of the corner & down! Try the trailing brake thing, not actually slowing but applying just enough to let the Nanny know you are there & on it already if things go wrong; try smoothly feeding in throttle input on the way out, but learn how & when it's safe to do that without making Nanny sit up & complain! Work out what you can do using OTHER control inputs, your body weight, & anything else you have any degree of control over - if you want to ride your Spyder hard it becomes a 'whole of body' experience to get the absolute best out of your Spyder!! And while the 'real' skilled two wheel riders on well prepared bikes don't have anything much to worry about, the local 'wannabees' in my part of the world now know that without any doubts, even just 'good' practices from an old fart like me on a Spyder with 2 front wheels steering & braking plus the Nanny keeping an eye on things is far & away better than
their absobloodylute
best they can put up on anything with only two wheels!! :thumbup:
But if you don't want to do all that, your Spyder can still be the greatest provider of 'Miles of Smiles' without you having to work too hard at it at all. You get out of it what you are prepared to put in - you want to go faster & harder, then you need to work a bit harder at it; but if you don't want to do all that, you can still have a great ryde without getting that heavily involved! :yes:
hyea:
