Finally, after two years, I'm cornering hard enough to ware my back tire all the way to the edge. I'm wondering, "when will I drag a footpeg??" Doing an oil change this afternoon, I get under there and see a scrape in the ceramic at the exhaust collector. "Weird," I thought, " I must have ran over something and it flew up and hit my collector. I never even felt that."

Then I look back a little further and i see a small grind spot on the underside of the short segment before the muffler.

The eyelet for the spring hook has been ground down and bent. over.

I will need to look into having a new eyelet welded more to the left side of the pipe where it can not touch. Any other suggestions for fixing a/o protecting exhaust from scrapes?

Must have been some real cool looking trails of fireworks on the road behind me. I never even knew. Never heard it. Never felt it. Never thought I would have done all the stuff i've done on this bike. No way. Now that I am scraping, what can i do to protect myself. Will I fall from scraping hard parts?

Finally, anyone know of a full system that has a reputation for good cornering clearance or do I just get used to this now?

* Last updated by: Rook on 7/17/2010 @ 2:18 PM *

Tell the pipe manufacturer that you are their test rider. Tell them to move the spring over and give you a new header for your R&D work with the moved spring tab revised.

Yes, you will lift the rear wheel off the ground you start to push it over more. So, simply catch the back end coming out and everything is cool.

Tell the pipe manufacturer that you are their test rider.

that would be a switch....a Japanese pipe maker using a 200 lb, American test rider!

So anyone out there----is this really it? I have leaned the 14 about as hard as it is going to go??

Do I need a whole new bike or can I just get a different kind of pipe with better clearance? Anyone have any idea

* Last updated by: Rook on 7/19/2010 @ 10:53 AM *

rook maybe you need to adjust the rear sag

Haven't really checked into it but the foot peg feelers seem lower than the rest for lean angle unless there was something uneven on the road. I haven't hit my peg feelers at all and ride pretty fast although not really leaned over to the ground I prefer to lean my body a little more than the bike to keep the bike at more upright angle which I think is pretty standard procedure.

a Japanese pipe maker using a 200 lb, American test rider!

Stock suspension setup isn't even close to being ok for most folks that end up with the '14.

HMmm- i haven't adjusted my rear suspension but if I did, I would have tried softer rather than harder. The back has always hopped up off of bumps even after I tightened the front up.

I do believe the American version of a 200 lb rider may well be the difference.

* Last updated by: Rook on 7/19/2010 @ 2:32 PM *

It has nothing to do with a rider. It has everything to do with lowering the bike, lean the bike over = What clearance do we have now with a light rider, but entered a heavy compression downhill, the shocks are at max adjust; do we build a pipe with physical clearance that clears under compression or do we just slap the pipe together, tell the owner to run extended fork tubes and lose some weight off the plumber cleavage is one pipe builder to the next.

Rook you missed the humor was that an english sparrow or an african sparrow?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2R3FvS4xr4

lol Laden or unladen??

Rook have you adjusted your suspension at all?

What size rear tire are you running? a 50 or 55 series?

^^The front suspension was tightened because it had bottomed a couple times in the first 500 miles of ownership. I have not adjusted my rear suspension from stock...I do not know what the rear is set on. I just left it alone since it seems to be quite stiff. The back seems to buck up off of the larger bumps I hit at highway speed. The back seems to need softening for street riding. I would doubt the rear suspension was sagging too low but I guess that is something I should check.

I have used a 55 height tire since the stocker was used up. Tires are never run at much less than 40 psi.

Can we rule out the pipe? Do they all have pretty much the same clearance?

Yea Rook rule the exhaust out. With a properly adjusted suspension you'l notice a huge difference.

When you say stiff it could many different things, when you say that the rear bucks off of bumps that tells me the rear suspension is not right.

Properly measuring the sag front and rear and making the needed adjustments will help tremendously. If you have too much sag you will have clearance issues. You have to remember these settings come from the factory set for around 150 pound rider. So right off the floor most people are going to have suspension issues.

You have 3 adjustments that can be made that affects ground clearance, rideability and tracking straight up and cornering (by how the tires remain in contact with the road surface and how they react to imperfections in the road surface).

1. Preload
2. compression dampening
3. Rebound dampening

Maybe I'm the only one who hasn't turned the 14 hard enough? I can do 140 through a local canyon and pull some serious g's...wear marks to the side of the tire and Ive never scraped anything? I weigh 220...

LOL you can't scrap the exhaust at the collector connection area period. Get two strong guys to lay your bike over until the bar ends almost touch the pavement (stop, before that, the belly cowling will hit first) and you will see the exhaust never gets close to touching. The foot peg will grind to nothing before that section of the exhaust makes contact in a turn.

What did you drag the bike over? A rock ? LOL

Get two strong guys to lay your bike over until the bar ends almost touch the pavement (stop, before that, the belly cowling will hit first) and you will see the exhaust never gets close to touching.

I'm pretty careful about making stupid mistakes with my bikes and I admit to the mishaps I have had. I sure think i would remember dragging the exhaust over a large object like a rock.

After market full systems have fatter headers with less ground clearance than stock pipes. If it is possible to slam the collector dropping out of a wheelie, I'm sure it must be possible to scrape it while leaned over--at least with the suspension compressed. The small scrape up front looks to be right in line with the more severe ground down spring tab mark. It is possible that the collector scrape was caused by a chunk of debris that flew up but I would bet that both marks were caused by the same thing.

As I believe someone was suggesting above, it is possible that the mark(s) was caused by being leaned over and riding passed and contacting some sort of small rise in the pavement. That could have scraped my pipe without being leaned over at such an extreme angle. That might explain why the peg never touched, also.

In any case, I think there needs to be some adjustment to my rear suspension. I'll be trying that touching up the scrapes with some flat black header paint. If the scrapes don't come back, I'll call it solved.

LOL you can't scrap the exhaust at the collector connection area period

umm, yes you can and it has nothing to do with max lean angle and more to do with lateral G forces and soft suspension settings when cornering at speed in a down hill corner that dips and taxes the suspension travel.

* Last updated by: heathun on 7/29/2010 @ 10:58 AM *

cornering at speed in a down hill corner that dips

Now that you mention it, that would be a pretty good description of many of my fav corners. The real tight freeway ramps seem to be often situated right at an overpass and you have some pretty good downhill grades going into the corner. Usually pretty flat grade exiting.

I thought I would start with adjusting rear preload but it I measured the spring and it is just short of 7" top to bottom which tells me the sag is set to max tight already. There are still ~ 1/2" of threads to tighten down the adjuster nut but that seems like that would be tightening the spring beyond it's useable limit of 6.9" - 7.5"

If I did want to adjust the rear sag, I would need a hook wrench (>> to 5:08 in vid below). Is there any conventional tool that would accomplish the same thing as the hook wrench?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK3flKxf41U&feature=related

which tells me the sag is set to max tight already.

Have you measured the sag?

If I did want to adjust the rear sag, I would need a hook wrench (>> to 5:08 in vid below). Is there any conventional tool that would accomplish the same thing as the hook wrench?

If you don't have a shock wrench or anyplace to pick one up you can use a flat head screw driver and a rubber mallet. Make sure it isn't a sharp flat head and tap with the mallet only as hard as needed to turn the nut.

Thanks, Heathun. I know, the first step is to measure the sag difference between rider off and rider on.

I have not measured sag yet. I probably am not using proper terminology when I say "sag". I was measuring the coil spring on the back shock to determine if there would be any point in making the preload stiffer. The measurement was 6.9 inches and that is supposed to be the stiffest setting. There is no reason to stiffen up the rear if its already at it's stiffest setting.

I can see how a flat tipped punch or similar tool could be used to tapo loose the adjuster nuts but that would not be my style. I'll order a hook wrench somewhere.

If the ZX14 is not lowered and the suspension is in good working order, you still can't scrape the exhaust header shown in the original picture at lean angles doable in the real world with this bike.

Nothing you say can convince me. For you to compress the front and rear suspension enough on a non-lowered bike to scrape the header in the picture, you'd have to go to the fork travel stop hard AND travel over a bump in the pavement.

If you are doing that, you are overloading your suspension and the solution is a couple $K for an Ohlins fork or at least better springs and valving. And maybe an Ohlins shock too.

The point is, the bike is not designed to be operated that way. Irregardless of the fact I call bullshit on a non-lowered ZX14 scraping the header in the picture while knee dragging in a corner, if you want to ride like that, get the RR BMW or ZX10 or R1 or something designed to be ridden like that.

Otherwise, quit complaining.

The front is not the immediate concern. That could have been caused by anything but if it WAS scraping the ground, it barely touched as you can see in the photo. I feel comfortable just keeping an eye on the front but the back should be fixed or as you say, Privateer, i will just have to buy a ZX-10 to solve the problem!

if i can drag the exhaust on that, you may legitimately call BS.

* Last updated by: Rook on 8/4/2010 @ 5:43 AM *

There is so much good info on the net to help with sag adjustments. You canread a bunch of them and combine techniques and tips. Seems like everyone has a great tip to share.

Quik Basics of Sag Adjustments

http://www.sportrider.com/tech/146_0308_set_your_static_sag/index.html

Solo Sag Adjustments

http://www.fireblades.org/forums/articles-general/47915-setting-suspension-sag-your-motorcycle-yourself.html

Dave Moss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK3flKxf41U&feature=related

Keith Code

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlqVx4mWUw

Detailed Suspension Tune in 4 Days

http://www.gostar-racing.com/club/motorcycle_suspension_set-up.htm

* Last updated by: Rook on 9/10/2010 @ 2:31 PM *