Loosing the front on the 999

I have been reading everything I can get my hands on about the 999 these days.
From what I have been reading about the WSB guys they have been having trouble keeping the front tire stuck to the asphalt. Erick Bostrom's little get off at the end of last year is an example. Toseland, Haga and Laconi to name a few more. Also from what I understand the geometry of the race bikes is the same as what we, John Doe public, get at 23.5 and 24.5 deg. rake. I understand that Toseland uses the 24.5 setting to gain more stability during braking.
I have not lost mine but I could tell it was pushing pretty good with the stock Pilot Sport tires. I had set the rear ride hight to 285mm and the sag to 30mm but had not raised the fork tubes in the triple clamps. The forks were still at the stock settings.
I have had good luck with Metzler Rennsports on my R1 but that is an R1, different animal. I was wondering what tires others have run on the 999 for track or road use
with good results or bad.
Section 8 has a great site for 999 setup.
Any information about front end problems would be of great help.
I will use the stock tires, 2004 still has the Pilot Sports, on the new ride for break in only and trade them out after a stock dyno run and then with a Power Commander installed just to see what happens.
Of course I will let you all know the results!
Thanks

I don't have setup experience with the 999, but the problems the WSB guys run into usually don't rear their ugly heads for the rest of us. When you say "pushing pretty good", what do you mean? Was it actually sliding? Straight up and down, or in a turn? If in a turn, were you on the gas, brakes, or neutral throttle?

Although I don't go at the WSBK pace, I lost the front of my 999 twice- once in a race which really took me unawares cause one minute I was on a podium position, the next minute the tank of the bike had winded whilst I was on the grass.

The other time I was in waaaay too hot on the brakes on the front straight and in retrospect should have gone straight into the gravel but at the last moment thought, "I can make it!" . The front end went down and I broke my collarbone in 2 places. I don't think that this was the bikes fault but it's interesting that you don't really hear of rear end issues on the 999 only the front.

Anyone else had issues with losing the front and why this might be? By contrast I raced my 916 for a whole season and never lost the front- maybe cause I was going slower

Add me to the front end lost it blues. I was in a long sweeper the front end tucked on me when trying to sit the bike upright while panic stopping. Of course my suspension wasn't setup for me at that time either now it is and I believe my Pilot sports had been heat cycled a few times to the point grip may not have been what I thought it was when they were new

Set suspension of '03 999 as follows:

Front Preload- 4 Lines Showing
Front Rebound Damping- 8 Clicks Out
Front Comp. Damping- 6 Clicks Out
Rear Preload- 26mm Thread Showing from Top of Spring
Rear Rebound Damping- Maximum
Rear Comp. Damping- 1 Turn Out

Replaced Pilot Sports with Pilot Powers. Lowered air pressure to 30 lbs front and rear. Result: Better tracking and greater stability.

Cool.....When I sell my 853, I can advertise it as a 999 - because I lost the front end in turn 2 at Laguna Seca. Didn't Xaus lose it there, too?

I must be a WSBK-level rider!

Guys.....there is SOOOOOOO much to suspension that can lead to losing the front end - including riders who think that they are when they actually aren't - a street rider condition mostly.

shutting off the gas and overloading the front end, bottoming the front suspension under braking, overbreaking, just getting on the brakes hard instead of getting onto them and increasing brake pressure as the weight shifts to the front, crappy tires, underinflation, overinflation, rear end too high...........

but it's always much easier to blame it on the bike. couldn't be the rider.....nooooo.

Not sure if you guys have ever been anywhere around a track when a real fast guy gets on. I'm no Kenny Roberts; I get my knee down and take my tires to the edges. I do ok. Then I get passed by one of the local AFM fast guys - Kunzelman. He walks away like I'm in reverse. And he's just a local guy. I'm sure I could kick his ass - except that I'm on an 853 and he's on a GSXR-1000 - I think. He left me so fast I have no idea what he was riding except that it was frickin' fast and I didn't have long to see it. I'm sure he could probably do the same on a Cushman scooter.

I go to a STAR school and see Jason out on one of the stock schools GSXR-1000's.....frickin' lightyears faster. I will never be that fast. I never WANT to be that fast.

I dare to say that none of us are as fast as Jason. Much less Hodgson or Bostrom level.

We are not the best riders nor are our machines set up as well as them. I'd look at those two factors before we start blaming the bikes for crashing.

I have my standard 999 set up, for the most part, like section8. I put on a set of H2's, and noticed that the front tire was a fair bit taller than the stock Pilots. So I pulled the forks up about lines. MAN! What a sweet ride, I never had a problem, knee on the deck (finally) and pushing harder every time out. Then...

I got a deal on some Rennsport Street tires, so I tried them out. After scrubbing them in and getting them up to temp, I started to push harder. I wasn't even at 75% of what I was comfortable with when the front broke. I saved it with some heroics and an immediate trip to the garage to get my shorts out of my arse. I contributed it to a cold day, too high of PSI, and maybe some pilot induced oscillations from yours truly. So...

I go out on a warmer day, lower PSI, tires up to temp and the same damn thing happened. This time not so bad, but I felt it and wasn't happy.

I feel that if I pull the forks back down to where they were originally I could solve the problem. But my solution was to put H2's back on.

Just my on sloppy front traction.

Your sarcasm is noted Buckliew.

However, you should remember that a rider doesn't have to be going that fast to push the bike over its limits. Really fast riders have a number of techniques to go much faster without pushing the bike any harder. They can do it more consistenently and constantly than the average rider. There are many factors- body position and weight distribution, throttle control, braking techniques, smoothness on the controls etc etc. to name but a few.

There was a good article in "Bike" magazine which illustrated this point very well. Bike had their own privateer rider in the British Superbike Series (whose name I can't remember although he rode a GSXR1000) who was given the chance to ride one of the Rizla Suzukis (On which John Reynolds won the 2004 title) and clocked times nowhere near the team riders. However on the datalogger it was apparent that he was pushing the bike harder in some respects like on the braking where he was logging a much higher brake fluid pressures than the team rider. Doing so didn't make him faster but it did push the bike harder making him more likely than the team rider to crash despite going slower.

There are many different aspects to riding fast and it's not all about just going fast all though that is a big part of it.

On our local race series in 2004 there were 4 999s and all of them lost the front at some point, myself included, most of them more than once. Were they good riders? Yes, not bad for a club level. Given a grid of 40 odd bikes it seems odd that whilst other bikes crashed too, none of them had anything like the number of front end dumps of the 999s. It could be because the riders had to ride faster in the corners to make up for the lack of power down the straight compared with the Jap bikes or it could be something else. It might even be that the inherent weight distribion of the Duc makes it more susceptible to this. Whatever it might be, it would be short-sighted to eliminate this statistical anomaly outright because it doesn't fit in with your pre-conception.

However, I do agree with you that there is little in common with the full factory race bikes on the track and what most of us buy from the showroom to ride on the street although this does make for interesting armchair discussion.

I think it's impossible to compare the WSB bikes to yours regardless of rider.

Their bikes are not even close to the same geometry as your bikes are.

Apples and oranges

I have lost the front on a FZR, GXSR, 996, 999 and a YZ250F. About the only I haven't lost the front on, has been my Banshee at the sand dunes.

A couple of the world's best racers have noticed a vague feeling on their 999s and every street and track day rider says the fronts are no good. The front end of a 999 is beyond all of us.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by section8superbike &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I think it's impossible to compare the WSB bikes to yours regardless of rider. Their bikes are not even close to the same geometry as your bikes are. Apples and oranges </TD></TR></TABLE>

There's that, too.

But basically, if you loose the front then it's because you've made a mistake and don't have the feel or experience to realize it or to recover from it. I've lost the front on my Ducs several times and crashed twice because of it - but one of those times I pulled a dumb move carrying too much entry speed into a blind off-camber turn, and the other time the track was freezing cold and the front just folded. There are things you just won't get away with doing, though if you don't have enough front-end feel you can play with the setup (or the ergos) to try and improve it. More trail usually helps.

Mark, Kunzelman runs top-10 in Formula Pacific a few seconds off guys like Dave Stanton, Ken Hill and Chris Siglin. Neither of us could keep up with him even if we swapped bikes.