For the next 2 weeks, looks like our standard tour also involves the official socal supermoto snow tour! Roads are still pretty clean and ice free. Just slightly colder, and a whole lot purtier.
What is a catchcan?
A catchcan is a containment device for bikes for trackuse. Not only can spilled liquids cause a crash, they also ruin the surface of the track.
Why have a catchcan? Because it’s a very awkward situation when someone comes up to you and tells you the reason they have a broken wrist is because your bike spewed fluid on the track.
Can’t I just use a soda can?
No, here’s why:
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Buy, or make my own?
Honestly when it comes to safety you should just suck it up and buy one. Available here. However, if you’re willing to do it right, are cheap, and bored, then here’s how to make your own. Disadvantage is if you screw it up you can cause somebody else’s crash, have your bike stallout, and it looks like a bomb. Advantages are that it’s slightly cheaper, and looks like a bomb.
Step 1: Start with a clean workspace:
Step 2:
Materials. You’ll need 5″ piece of pvc pipe, end caps, brass barbs, or other metal tube like things that you can hook a hose too, and secure to the pipe, pvc glue cement stuff, zip ties and/or safety wire to secure to bike ( I used both). Here’s a picture, imagine those plastic barbs are metal, the hardware store was closed to i mocked it up with those instead. Remember that gas melts plastic.
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Step 3: Do a quick mock up on your bike. See where you want to put the can on your bike. This will guide both the size of your catchcan, and importantly where you put your barbs.
Step 4. Cut the pipe to lenth, glue on endcaps, and drill where you want to put your brass threaded barb things. If you drilled a hole just slightly smaller than the threads, they’ll thread right into the pvc for a tight fit. At my hardware store, those brass fittings were $2.79 a pop, so instead I epoxied these little bass tube things. Ugly but effective. Important: Run all carb and tank hoses to the can. Have 2 additional fittings, one on top to work as a vent. You may want to consider a larger fitting for this. And one more on the bottom that you’ll plug that will serve as a drain.
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Now test it. First lay your bike down and see if any fluid flows out. Next go for a ride to make sure your catch is venting properly. If not it’ll vapor lock your carb and your bike will run like it’s out of gas. If it’s mounted securly enough to handle a crash, holds fluid, and vents properly, you are good to go. Brrraaaaappp!
Speaking of retro, here’s a classic supermoto vid that never gets old:
I was cruising around on this very very old thread on BARF and found a pic of my first supermoto and my first supermoto bike at perris raceway. The bike was a completely flogged converted 98 ktm lc4.
The tires were avon azaros. The combo of that bike’s piggish weight and tires that never warmed up made riding the track that day like ice. That was my first trackday circa 02′. I rode a hour to another riders house from thumpertalk, with tools in my backpack for removing the kickstand and stuff, the boots were borrowed. Ahh the good ol days, when you had to explain to every other person why there was street tires on yer dirtbike…
New flier. ooooohhhhhh, aaaaaaahhhhhhh
I don’t ride flat track. But I want to. So you if you have a flat tracker and want to swap for a supermoto trackday let me know!
Some bikes just scream “ride me”, and here’s one of em, courtesy of the good folks at bikeexif. I highly recommend signing up for their rss feed. very worthy stuff there.
I saw this guy on a f2 come flying into an intersection through the yellow light, clutch pulled in, wearing shorts, nazi spike half helmet. You know the type.
When I give lessons I stand around a lot. And when some rider comes cruising by I always watch them take the turn next to the lot I use. The vast majority of riders pull in their clutch when they take the tight right hander turn. So the tip of the day is get your hand off the clutch! Motorcycles are happy when the engine is engaged with the rear tire. The bike is more stable. Picture cruising down the freeway at 70mph. Now pull in the clutch. You’ll notice the bike feels much less stable, and if it’s one thing you want in a turn it’s stability. For your corner entry, part of “in slow out fast is” is getting your shifting and your braking done in a straight line before the turn, not in it. So if you find your self grabbing for brakes in the turn, or pulling in the clutch, start working on in slow out fast, and getting the bike sorted before the turn, not in it.
Customer Jimmy Vu just sent me this pic, now this is becoming my kind of bike!
Now Jimmy was having some problems with making the cables work. So that I don’t get sued by some jackass improperly fightering his scoot, my official advice is buy a kit from a reputable manufacturer like speigler. It’ll come with a top tripple, mounts, longer brake lines, etc…
That said I’ve done this to a ton of bikes, and always on the cheap. So here’s Brian’s guide to turning your uncomfortable ergonomic nightmare of a bike into a light, super flickable street fighter.
1) The most fun part, remove all plastic crap. Your guide should be the following: Does it make the bike go or stop? if not toss it in your ebay pile. Plastics, windscreen, mirrors, etc.
2) pick yourself up any ol dirtbike bars. “Oversized bars” are more durable and look the biz. Get some dirtbike bar mounts to match.
3) Drill holes into your triple clamp. No going back after this eh? Don’t worry about it, if you screw up really bad you can get new ones off of ebay. After drilling one side, make yourself a template with cardboard. Mark reference points, so that you can flip it over, and use it as a guide on the other side. Now your holes will be symetrical. Remember that if you’re a mm or two off it’ll translate to really off at the ends of the bars.
4) cover your tank with a rag. you now have a handy work bench and won’t scratch your tank. ok that should have been step 1.
5) Mount up your bars to check the fit, and just how bitchen your new setup feels.
6) Mount up your controls. Yeah I know you’re lines aren’t long enough. Here’s some cheater fix’s.
- Disconnect all your mounts that hold down your front brake line. The additional play will get you a few very important inches. Later use cable ties to secure the line. If you don’t have stainless steel lines, here’s a perfect time to do a very worthy upgrade.
- If that doesn’t work, get brakelines from your bike’s nekid sibling. Ie if you have a Honda 954, use 919 lines. If you have a gsxr1000, try bandit brakelines off ebay.
- Throttle cables. These are probably definitly too short. A little trick is to run them to the right of your forks instead of through them. That usually does the trick.
7) Get a headlight. Pretty much any healight that you dig. I like to use ducati monster headlights combined with cheap ebay dog eared mounts. Other popular options are dirt bike headlights which are cool because they’re very light, or ebay dual light setups.
I’m sure I forgot something, since I wrote this in 10 min, but this will get you started.
