how fast would an SV go around the TT ?

I thought 100 would be easily possible, probably more, but seeing the stats above for tuned RVF400's doing "only" 110 means I am not so sure. An SV will not be as quick as a tuned RVF400.

Originally Posted by Sid Squid

Does anyone seriously think that 1950s race bikes and 1970 street bikes were better than our modern stuff?

But why in over 50 years has the average speed has only increased by 29mph? That's a full factory 1000c flame spitting beast of a bike with a superhereo riding (McGuiness of course).

Either the TT bikes in the 50's were way ahead of their time or our mechanical development of bikes has really slowed down since.

Or...........the TT used to be just one long straight road in the 50's !!

That said the basic combustion engine has pretty mcuh not changed since it's conception.

Originally Posted by Kwakadan

But why in over 50 years has the average speed has only increased by 29mph? That's a full factory 1000c flame spitting beast of a bike with a superhereo riding (McGuiness of course).

Either the TT bikes in the 50's were way ahead of their time or our mechanical development of bikes has really slowed down since.

Or...........the TT used to be just one long straight road in the 50's !!

That said the basic combustion engine has pretty mcuh not changed since it's conception.

suppose it comes down to there being a limit. ie a 500bhp bike will not be a great deal faster round the tt circuit than the current Senior bikes?

Originally Posted by SV650Racer

Id reckon close on to the times that the 400's did when they raced there..or even quicker maybe due to the SV's grunt out of turns over the 400. In Thunderbikes an SV can easily match a 400..it then comes down to rider.

John McGuiness did a 110mph lap aboard an RLR tuned RVF400 in 2004.
Steve Linsdell did a 109mph lap on a Yamaha FZR400RRSP the same year.

Id say the SV with a rider such as these could match that pace.

I wanted to do it on the SV trouble is now they have no twins class..it would be me versus the superbikes..

In short circuit, yes a 400 and a SV are very close match, but I think in the TT where straight line speed performance is much more prevalent, I think the 400s will have the edge. But if an RVF400 can do it in 110, then I'd extrapolate that a 'sorted' SV should be the right side of a ton!!

A quick google shows the rvf can do 135 against the SVs 130 ish - so not much difference.

Originally Posted by Kwakadan

But why in over 50 years has the average speed has only increased by 29mph? That's a full factory 1000c flame spitting beast of a bike with a superhereo riding (McGuiness of course).

Either the TT bikes in the 50's were way ahead of their time or our mechanical development of bikes has really slowed down since.

Or...........the TT used to be just one long straight road in the 50's !!

That said the basic combustion engine has pretty mcuh not changed since it's conception.

Einstein had the answer to that one. It's all down to E=mc2. The extra speed of the modern bike will obviously benefit on the straight and narrow, however through the twisties modern bikes are not leaps and bounds faster. If you want to corner twice as fast then the tyres and suspension have to deal with 4 times the kinetic energy and that just ain't gonna happen. Marginal improvements are made year on year but there comes a point that unless all the corners are banked and the road surface is replaced with a surface that provides a lot more grip then the twisties ain't gonna get any faster.

Tim.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by SV650Racer

Id reckon close on to the times that the 400's did when they raced there..or even quicker maybe due to the SV's grunt out of turns over the 400. In Thunderbikes an SV can easily match a 400..it then comes down to rider.

Sounds like sense to me. I reckon I could do about a 40mph lap

Originally Posted by I'm_a_Newbie

Einstein had the answer to that one. It's all down to E=mc2. The extra speed of the modern bike will obviously benefit on the straight and narrow, however through the twisties modern bikes are not leaps and bounds faster. If you want to corner twice as fast then the tyres and suspension have to deal with 4 times the kinetic energy and that just ain't gonna happen. Marginal improvements are made year on year but there comes a point that unless all the corners are banked and the road surface is replaced with a surface that provides a lot more grip then the twisties ain't gonna get any faster.

Tim.

Well thats... completely wrong really.

E=mc2 tells you how much energy matter has if you convert that matter into pure energy. So unless your SV has an atomic engine that equation has no meaning in this context what so ever.

Anyway, for a quick and easy to understand reason for why bikes now aren't going that much quicker than those before them is the relationship between power and top speed. As speed increases, power requirements are cubed (not squared). So, all things being equal, to double your top speed you need 8 times the power.

That's one of the reasons the current 200bhp+ monsters are only lapping 30mph faster than the bikes of the 60s.

Curious on that one, from what I vaguely recall of school physics a cube does come into it somewhere but figures only seem to kind of support that. The 10hp 50cc Suzuki that averaged the TT at 75 mph in 1962 topped out at about 85 mph. By a straight cubing, to double that to reach 170 mph would therefore require 1000hp, so aerodynamics has somehow made up for about an 800hp deficit?

Not a flame by any means, I'm pretty sure a cubing comes into it somewhere but for the life of me I can't figure it out. You'd need an assesment of frontal area, a co-efficient of friction for wind resistance (plus, I'm going to guess, a way of incorporating the "suck" of the vortex vacuum left behind?) and the basic Newtonian physics to get the force required to accelerate a given mass. And my head explodes right about.... here

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

Curious on that one, from what I vaguely recall of school physics a cube does come into it somewhere but figures only seem to kind of support that. The 10hp 50cc Suzuki that averaged the TT at 75 mph in 1962 topped out at about 85 mph. By a straight cubing, to double that to reach 170 mph would therefore require 1000hp, so aerodynamics has somehow made up for about an 800hp deficit?

10hp X (170/85)^3 = 80bhp

double (& a bit for non-linear drag) gives you the 160-200 of a superbike now

where are you getting 1000bhp from?