Best Way to Pick Up a Bike

[MNeedham73]

The bike in this video is a BMW K1200 LT. Dry weight is 761 pounds.

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[ethics]

That's good advice. You have four times the strength in your legs and you are basically doing a leg press with the positioning. Well done.

[Arc]

Serious question. Why do bikes weigh so much? The BMW you show weighs over 700 lbs.

A F1 car weighs 1400 lbs. with ballast added. Without the ballast they can weigh as little as 1000 lbs. Their engines turn out between 700 and 900 HP while revving up to 19,000 RPM.

What is the main source of weight for bikes and what limits or inhibits them from being lighter? In race cars and fighter planes weight is your enemy most of the time and I assume the basic physics hold true for bikes.

[ethics]

Serious question. Why do bikes weigh so much? The BMW you show weighs over 700 lbs.

A F1 car weighs 1400 lbs. with ballast added. Without the ballast they can weigh as little as 1000 lbs. Their engines turn out between 700 and 900 HP while revving up to 19,000 RPM.

What is the main source of weight for bikes and what limits or inhibits them from being lighter? In race cars and fighter planes weight is your enemy most of the time and I assume the basic physics hold true for bikes.

Bikes use Titanium, chrome, steel and other heavy metals. Cars use plastics and fiberglass. Most bikes don't weigh as much as that Beemer though. My bike for example is 352 lbs.

[MNeedham73]

Heh, and my bike weighs almost double what Leon's does. 668 pounds. My dad's weighs in at 787 pounds, and the Goldwing he had prior weighed in at almost 900.

Cruisers are tourers are the heavyweights. Sport bikes, for the most part, are much lighter.

[Arc]

Bikes use Titanium, chrome, steel and other heavy metals. Cars use plastics and fiberglass. Most bikes don't weigh as much as that Beemer though. My bike for example is 352 lbs.

The cars are mostly made up of aluminum honeycomb bonded with layers of carbon fiber which is really light but really tough.

What are the differences in construction and weights of say a 750 CC racing bike and your average rice burner on the street? Much difference in engine output?

[Biker]

Hell yes there's a difference in engines. Your typical racing bike is going to have an engine that's tuned, balanced, and will rip your lips off within seconds of launching from the starting line.

Frames and engines are going to lend most of the weight to a bike. Get a Geezer Glide, and now you're adding saddle bags, tour pack, fairing, etc. Toss the camping gear on or better yet, latch a trailer on the back, and you're looking at over a thousand pounds going down the road.

[ethics]

750 cubes is about an average sports bike anyway. The only ones who make it are Suzuki. The rest are mostly 600s or 1kcc. Let's say that my R6 is 352 lbs. An R1 which us 1kcc is about 50 lbs. Heavier.

[ethics]

Hell yes there's a difference in engines. Your typical racing bike is going to have an engine that's tuned, balanced, and will rip your lips off within seconds of launching from the starting line.

Frames and engines are going to lend most of the weight to a bike. Get a Geezer Glide, and now you're adding saddle bags, tour pack, fairing, etc. Toss the camping gear on or better yet, latch a trailer on the back, and you're looking at over a thousand pounds going down the road.

Yep. And cruisers are heavier than sports bikes anyway and usually have double the engine.

[Biker]

Not to mention the gearing is WAY different. New Harley's have 88 ci engines now. That equates to 1442 cc.

[MNeedham73]

Heh, not much bigger than the engine in my bike. The new HD's do have 6th gear though, which I don't have.

[Biker]

Heh.. That 6th gear is SWEET, too!

[MNeedham73]

I've heard a few guys say they don't like it. When pressed, they couldn't give a good reason lol.

[ethics]

Heh.. That 6th gear is SWEET, too!

Can't imagine my bike without it. ;)

Although, the only time I kick it there is if I am doing 70+.

[Brazbit]

That is how I was trained to lift a bike. Of course I was trained on lifting Gold Wings so there are not many other ways to do it.

[Kluge]

Serious question. Why do bikes weigh so much?

Cars can use unibody construction, almost monocoque in fly-boy language. Bikes mostly have hard-points end to end. They do weigh about half a car. My Fiat 850 (car) was 1600 lbs, unibody and had a 900 cc engine. Rust was like osteoporosis for it and that's why there are few left... a little rust and there's nothing to connect the suspension to.

Getting more erudite and less experienced, the frames on lighter bikes are more truss-shaped, like a railroad bridge, while older designs use heavy steel members that rely on resistance to bending. The light bikes omit a lot of parts that don't seem necessary, like big fenders. With cruisers the heavy steel frame members supply a lot of places to bolt & weld more steel stuff, so they get heavier.

The classic police-bike windshield is a big culprit as far as I can tell. It's a kite mounted to the steering gear and I'm sure the heavier bikes were more stable as their weight on the steering gear supplies the restoring force that makes the bike stable. You'll notice all the light, fast bikes have the fairings mounted to the frames even though there's more fairing just to reach the frame's mounting points.