Bcware you need to make a video of you riding to show us what these bikes are capable of. If it doesn't already exist.
I am planning to put something up this season. I need all of the sand and ice off the road first, however
two pound difference. That is a lot of rotating mass to lose
I've been doing more research on this and its effect on braking/acceleration. It's always very difficult to find good information among the thousands of heated forum arguments out there.
This link is very good. It's about cars, but covers every component of the drive train with formulas, calculators, and great explanations. Much of it will apply to motorcycles.
http://stephenmason.com/cars/rotationalinertia.html
An excerpt:
"The high school physics answer is that the rotational inertia effects braking exactly as much as it effects acceleration. After all, anything you spun up must now be spun down. As usual, though, the high school physics answer is wrong in the practical sense. First off, you don't need to de-spin everything. You can put the clutch in and come to a complete stop with the engine and flywheel still happily revving away. More important, though, is that acceleration is power limited, and braking is traction limited (for the most part, anyway). Let's look at this in more detail.
When you accelerate, the engine has to spin up the various rotating bits of the drive train and use the remaining power and available traction to accelerate the car down the road. As long as you're not traction limited, any reduction in rotational inertia amounts to more engine power that's available for accelerating the car. If you ARE traction limited, say in first gear, then rotational inertia reductions won't improve your acceleration in THAT PHASE of acceleration...though it will likely help on the high end when you're no longer traction limited. And the static weight reduction that usually accompanies rotational inertia reduction will still be of benefit.
When you slam on the brakes, the brake pads have to de-spin wheels and drive train, and the tires' contact patches have to slow the car. This means that if your brakes can already lock up all four tires (and any healthy brake system should be able to, ABS notwithstanding), reductions in rotational inertia won't help. You can already bring the rotating assemblies to a complete stop at speed, it's the tires traction with the road that limits your stopping distance. This is for a single panic stop; rotational inertia reductions will still pay benefits (albeit small ones) in terms of reduced brake load (heating) and better fade resistance for repeated stops.
In both cases, rotational inertia has an impact when you're power limited (in terms of engine power or braking power), but becomes non-important when you're traction limited. The reason why rotational inertia is more important for acceleration is that the average street car is power limited under acceleration and traction limited under braking. And just to be clear, lighter wheels an tires and such will STILL HELP, it's just that you won't get the multiplicative effects given by the calculators below."
and of course:
"Shaving a pound from your tires is equivalent to shaving at most 2 pounds of non-rotating weight. That's PER TIRE, so a pound off each tire could worth close to 8 pounds of weight reduction. For wheels, the multiplier is closer to 1.6, so saving 5 pounds per wheel (20 total) would feel like a static weight reduction of 32 pounds. For brake discs, it can be as low as 1.2. Regardless of the equivalent weight ratio, you're best off reducing weight as much as possible, as you might expect."
) and more of a power limit, less rotational mass is a great benefit. I will be able to tell more when I get the 80 out this year. I have pulled 2lbs off the rear wheel and 3lbs off the front wheel. But also 12.5lbs total this year and 75 from stock.
